The Huntington Library, Art Collections, & Botanical Gardens

The Huntington Botanical Gardens

Plant Trivia Timeline

The following timeline gives world history from the viewpoint of a botanist. It is the story of plant discovery and use, and demonstrates the roles of plants in human civilization.

We are still charting events for this Timeline and appreciate your suggestions for additions and improvements to the topics covered. Please mail comments to: PlantEd, Huntington Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108-1299/Telephone: 626.405.2160/FAX 626.405.2260/e-mail planted@huntington.org.

BP

5 Billion+: 12 December. Carbon (the basis of organic life), oxygen, and other elements were created in the fury of burning supernovae. Literally made when the stars were formed, these materials give meaning to claims that we are stardust. 5 Billion years BP is a plausible time frame for the super nova that might have given birth to the Milky Way galaxy. (Dauber & Muller, 1996) Recent information suggests this was not at all the first event to form such elements.

3.75 Billion: Mixed deposits of ferrous and ferric oxide suggest the presence of free atmospheric oxygen. This could be construed as evidence for photosynthetic activity. (de Duve, 1995)

3.5 Billion: Origination of the oldest dated stromatolites. These layered geological formations are built by successive generations of blue green algae (cyanobacteria.) (de Duve, 1995) Lower Precambrian rocks in South Africa contain what is possibly the earliest known evidence of cellular organisms, resembling blue green algae. (Bold, Alexopoulos, & Delevoryas, 1980)

2 Billion: Data suggest that by this time in the history of the Earth molecular oxygen began to make a significant difference in the nature of the atmosphere. (de Duve, 1995)

1.6 Billion: Strong evidence indicates that filamentous and unicellular blue green algae existed by this period in the history of the Earth. (Bold, Alexopoulos, & Delevoryas, 1980)

900 Million: Late Precambrian deposits at Bitter Springs, Australia, hold numerous kinds of blue-green and green algae. (Bold, Alexopoulos, & Delevoryas, 1980)

570 Million: Dawning of the Paleozoic era

395 Million: The lower Devonian period. The Scottish Rhynie chert deposit from this period is famous for its excellent representation of Rhynia, one of the earliest vascular plants in the fossil record. By 350 million years BP land plants at last became significant. By the upper Devonian, Calamites (the giant horsetail) achieved abundance (as represented in strata of that age.) We know now that seed bearing plants (Archaeosperma and Spermolithus) are represented in upper Devonian deposits. (Bold, Alexopoulos, & Delevoryas, 1980)

345 Million: Now termed the Mississippian, this period together with the Pennsylvanian (through to 225 million years BP) constitutes the age of coal - the Carboniferous.

136 Million: With deposits from the Cretaceous period we see the first evidence of flowering plants. (Bold, Alexopoulos, & Delevoryas, 1980)

BC

50,000 Wild date seed were left in the Shanidar Cave of Northern Iraq. Also found at that site was evidence that cave dwellers consumed chestnuts, walnuts, pine nuts, and acorns. (Root, 1980)

17,000+ Excavations at Wadi Kubbaniya, Nile Valley (Egypt) reveal charred remains of 25 different plants, including wild nut sedge tubers, acacia seed, cattail rhizomes, and palm fruit. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

8000+ Wheat and barley were Near Eastern food crops. In ancient cultures barley was the everyday food of the poor. Archeologists have learned that by this time people used flint sickles and grinding stones. The cultivation of grains had an essential role in the development of civilization.

7000 Flax was known in Syria and Turkey, and is apparently the earliest plant source for fiber (linen) as well as an important source of oil (pressed from the seed). By 5000 B.C. we know that various flax species were involved. Evidence shows that seed size increased over time, suggesting that humans were selecting for larger seed.

6800 A "large hoard of carbonized lentils," over 1,000,000 seed, was present in B Yiftah'el, north Israel. The size of this hoard indicates the lentils were under cultivation. (Zohary & Hops, 1994)

6500 Faba bean was known in Israel. Lentil, pea, chickpea, and faba bean constituted the principal pulses for ancient Old World agriculture.

6000 Chili pepper and beans of this date have been discovered in a Peruvian highland valley. Lima beans (Phaseolus lunatus) and regular beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) are known archaeologically from Peru. (Heiser, 1981)

5500 In midden levels dating from 5500 to 7000 B.C. in Tamaulipas, Mexico, researchers have discovered evidence of gourds, squashes, beans, and chili peppers.

5000 Corn (Zea mays) was cultivated in Meso-America. This important grain would be introduced to Europe by Columbus. [See 1550, China]

5000 Domesticated rice (Oryza sativa) is reported from the Ho-mu-tu site in Chekiang Prov., China. Cabbage seed from this period were discovered in earthen jars in Shensi Province (today cabbages make up 1/4 of all expenditures for vegetables among Chinese families).

4000 Cotton seed dating from this time period have been found in Pakistan.

4000 Grape (Vitis vinifera) is thought to have been cultivated in the area from Afghanistan to the Black Sea.

3000 Sorghum was known in sub-Saharan Africa. [See 1100 B.C., China].

2800 The Fah Shên-Chih Shu details five sacred crops of China: soybeans, rice, wheat, barley, and millet. (Root, 1980)

2737 The brewing of tea was discovered by Chinese Emperor Shen Nung. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

2000 Pearl millet was cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa.

2000 Since the Bronze Age, olive has figured into the wealth of many Mediterranean populations.

2000 Peach (Prunus persica) and apricot (Prunus armeniaca) were mentioned in Chinese literature before 2000 B.C. It is supposed that apricots were transported to Greece by Alexander the Great. Certainly the Greeks knew peaches by 332 B.C. Virgil noted the Persian fruit in Rome, circa 50 B.C. By 1571 the Spanish had introduced three types to Mexico. [See 1663; 1977]

1550 A 65ft long medical scroll from Egypt (discovered in 1884 by Georg Ebers and named the Ebers Papyrus) lists about 800 medicinal drugs, including many herbs and spices, among them anise, caraway, cassia, coriander, fennel, cardamon, onions, garlic, thyme, mustard, sesame, fenugreek, saffron, and poppyseed. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1485 Hapshepsut, Queen of Egypt, had 31 myrrh trees imported to Egypt for planting at Thebes as homage to the god Amon. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1370 Chemical tests of red fabrics from Tell el 'Amara, Egypt show the presence of alizarin, a pigment extracted from madder (Rubia tinctorum.) (Zohary & Hopf, 1994)

1325 Many seed and other plant products were stored in the Tutankhamen tomb, including watermelon, safflower, emmer wheat, barley, lentils, chickpeas, flax, fenugreek, olive (leaves and oil), almond, date palm, garlic, cumin, and coriander. (Zohary & Hopf, 1994)

1100 Soybean (Glycine max) long had been domesticated in China. By 300 B.C. it is thought to have become one of two major food crops for northern China, by A.D.100 it was common throughout China and Korea. Lotus was known as a crop by this time.

1000 Researchers find evidence of peanut cultivation in Peru.

1000 By this time it is certain that oats were cultivated, most probably originating as weeds in wheat and barley fields. (Zohary & Hopf, 1994)

c694 Trees bearing wool (cotton) were introduced to Assyria by Sennacherib.

c500 The Susruta-Samhita, an Indian herbal, described 700 different plants of value. This time period in India also provides the earliest known record of banana.

c500 The oldest known Chinese herbal, the Classical Pharmacopeia of Tzu-I was written. Although no version of this book has survived since AD 500, a copy was available to Shen Nung, the writer of the Classical Herbal, which was produced as early as 100 BC.

c500 It is supposed that the radish was introduced to China from Europe.

c400 Hippocrates wrote numerous treatises on medicinal plants, such as saffron, cinnamon, thyme, coriander, mint, and marjoram. (Rosengarten, 1969)

c399 Condemned to death, Socrates was allowed to administer his own sentence by drinking a potion of poison hemlock, Conium maculatum. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996.)

c300 Theophrastus (ca. 372-287 B.C.), the Father of Greek Botany, considered plants from his own working knowledge of them, experience reflected in his "Inquiry" (Historia Plantarum) and "Causes." This included 550 kinds of plants. He discussed strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo), date palm, figs, and water lilies. His avoidance of more preposterous notions about plants made a seemingly auspicious beginning for botanical study. During the middle ages, however, Theophrastus's writings were generally unavailable, and second-hand versions were corrupted with misinformation - thus the level of botanical knowledge available in writing actually declined. The rediscovery and printing of his works beginning in 1483 replaced muddled interpretations of plants and helped rekindle an interest in botany. (HNT)

c300 Plants known to the ancient Chinese were discussed by Erh Ya. Other treatments from the period mention cultivated crops such as yam (Dioscorea esculenta) and taro (Colocasia).

250 By this time the Maya are known to have cultivated cacao intensively in Belize.

241 Annual tribute demanded after the conquest of Sicily allowed Rome to provide wheat cheaply to its citizens. War in general brought benefits to Rome through the capture of productive acreage, the opening of markets for Roman plantation-produced wine, and the taking of slaves. (Gras, 1946)

216 The south China province of Kweilin (a word that means Cassia Forest) was founded. The Kwei River could be translated as the Cassia River. (Rosengarten, 1969)

203 Peace terms proscribed tribute from Carthage to Rome that included 500,000 bushels of wheat and 300,000 bushels of barley. (Root, 1980)

c50 Varro described Roman agriculture, including cultivation of grain (wheat, spelt, & barley - but not rye or oats), legumes, olive, and grapes. By this time Romans had well-developed systems of legume rotation (the use of legumes as a fertilizer crop to return nitrogen to the soil.) (Gras, 1946)

c50 Columnella wrote a treatise on Roman Agriculture, covering many subjects, including the various benefits and difficulties of managing slaves versus tenants on large properties. (Gras, 1946)

c50 Virgil, though not a botanist, gave descriptions and information concerning 164 different plants known to the Greeks in his Georgica. (HNT, 1492 edition) Advice included laying fields fallow and allowing a crop of vetch and lupine (legumes) to mature before sowing wheat. Virgil recommends the scattering of manure as well as ashes. (Gras, 1946)

24 Aelius Gallus, the Egyptian prefect for Augustus' Roman Empire, led an ill-fated campaign to conquer the South Arabian spice kingdoms. (Rosengarten, 1969)

AD

c32 The extreme value of spikenard, a fragrant emollient made from Nardostachys jatamansi, is highlighted in a Biblical episode in Mark 14:3-6. In this passage, a believer is chastised for anointing Christ with this expensive substance, which could have been sold for charity. By the time of Pliny [See c70] the increase in direct Roman trade with India [See c40] lowered the cost of spikenard to one-third of the value it held before Roman fleets began to sail with the monsoons. (Rosengarten, 1969)

c32 Biblical account of Palm Sunday. The date palm has long been considered the tree of life in deserts of the Old World. With 70% sugar content the fruit serve humans and other animals. Moreover, the date palm is associated with fertility and fecundity.

C40 The Greek merchant Hippalus is said to have realized that seasonal monsoons could be used to take sailors back and forth across the ocean from Egypt to the pepper-producing Malabar coast of India. This led to extensive Roman fleets that captured the Indian spice trade from overland routes controlled by Arab traders. An account of this trade is recorded in The Periplus..., a treatise known from about 90 A.D. (Rosengarten, 1969)

c50 Dioscorides, the Father of Medical Botany, was author of an ancient compilation of descriptions and medicinal uses for plants, which was the most widely known western botanical text during the middle ages (HNT). The earliest herbals were recapitulations of Dioscorides. With an expanding awareness of the natural world in the 16th-century, herbalists began to make their own descriptions of plants, and at last Dioscorides's influence waned. Plants known to Dioscorides included about 650 different species.

c70 Pliny (Caius Plinius Secundus, A.D. 23-79), in his Natural History, discussed about 1000 different plants. Well known throughout the middle ages, this book constituted a major source of information on botany. Primarily an historian and storyteller, Pliny edited uncritically, even fancifully. Once the original, rarer source documents were discovered and printed, the errors in Pliny's account became obvious. (HNT) It is through Pliny that we know the exact costs of many products, and that farmers alternated crops of beans with spelt. He comments on the growing trend of farm land consolidation to create slave-maintained plantations. (Gras, 1946)

79 24 August - Pompeii was buried by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Walnuts were left at a table, uneaten by priests whose meal was terminally interrupted. (Root, 1980)

c90 John predicted the fall of Rome (disguised as Babylon,) describing how the merchants of that city would mourn the loss of their cinnamon and frankincense. (Rosengarten, 1969)

105 In this year, according to tradition, the first paper was made. The papermaker, Ts'ai Lun, used the inner bark of paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera). (Levetin & McMahon, 1996) A stand of paper mulberry is quite evident along the eastern edge of the Huntington parking lot.

280 Roman Emperor Probus rescinded the edict of Domitian, which had prohibited planting grape vineyards in the provinces. (Johnson, 1989)

290 The Peruvian tomb of a Moche warrior priest contained gold and silver jewelry shaped like peanuts. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

332 Constantine enacted a measure that bound tenants to country parcels, ensuring continued cultivation of land that might otherwise be abandoned. (Gras, 1946)

335 Cloves were delivered to Constantine - the first record of this spice in the West. The source, flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum, had been known in China for centuries, where in the Han Court etiquette demanded that a person received by the emperor hold a clove in his mouth to sweeten the breath. (Root, 1980)

c350 During the middle ages popular herbals of very little scientific content appeared. They contained no observations beyond those taken from of Dioscorides. The various versions of Apuleius' herbals were unfortunate simplifications both in text and in accuracy of plant illustrations. The Huntington has a copy of the first printed edition of Apuleius (1483), considered to be the first printed herbal. (HNT)

400 Haric (Alaric) the Goth demanded 3000 lbs of black pepper as part of the ransom for the city of Rome. His assaults on the city continued, and Rome fell on 24 August 410 after the third siege. (Rosengarten, 1969)

500 Coffee, apparently native to the mountains of Ethiopia, was known as a beverage in Arabia. It was first thought to have been roasted in the 1450's, with drinking of brewed coffee spreading to Egypt by 1510, to Constantinople in 1550, to Venice in 1616, to England in 1650, and to Holland in 1690. By 1600, coffee was grown in India, Ceylon, and the East Indies. Cultivation moved to the West Indies and Brasil via propagation from a single tree that was grown in Amsterdam. [See 1706]

548 Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote his Topographia Christiana, describing the importance of the harvesting and processing of pepper (Piper nigrum.) (Rosengarten, 1969)

593 Tea was taken to Japan, where it assumed a major role in Buddhist ritual. (Simpson, 1989)

c600 Mohammed was partial owner of a shop in Mecca, trading in plant products such as myrrh, frankincense, and spices. (Rosengarten, 1969)

610 Papermaking was introduced from China to Japan. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

632 Mohammed's death. His injunction against consumption of alcohol had immediate impact, such that within ten years drinking was already banned in Arabia and much of the new Islamic empire (Egypt, Libya, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Armenia.) (Johnson, 1989)

746 The Dutch and Germans began adding hops to beer. The British would not begin using hops until after 1524. (Simpson, 1989)

775 Charlemagne gave the upper slopes of the hill of Corton to the Abbey of Saulieu. The wine from this zone is still called Corton-Charlemagne. (Johnson, 1989)

812 Charlemagne ordered imperial farms in Germany to grow anise, fennel, fenugreek, and flax. (Rosengarten, 1969)

857 Several thousand people perished in the Rhine Valley - victims of St. Anthony's fire. Today we know this to be a type of poisoning resulting from a toxic fungal infection (ergot) of rye. The fungal pathogen discolored the grain but gave limited hints otherwise as to spoilage. Epidemics were most serious during times of famine when people consumed grain that might otherwise have been discarded. Widespread outbreaks occurred from time to time until 1816. The active ingredient is ergotamine, which when baked is transformed into lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). One study suggests that the Salem, MA witch trials resulted from hallucinations of important community members who were exposed to contaminated rye. (Root, 1980)

867 King Charles the Bald granted land on the Loire at Chablis to the Chapter of St. Martin at Tours for a vineyard. Because the Loire connects to the Seine, this wine became well known in Paris. (Johnson, 1989)

900 People in Flanders and Zeeland began systems of dikes to exclude the sea from lowland areas to create land for agriculture. In response to rising population, the same treatment would begin in Holland some 300 years later. (Ponting, 1991)

903 Ibn al-Faqih published Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan, which is interpreted to describe sorghum and cowpeas as food staples for Ghana. (R. L. Hall in Viola & Margolis, 1991)

1000 Many plants, including spinach and olive, arrived in Spain with the Moors.

1150 The first paper made in Europe was made in Spain - introduced there by the Moors. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1057 Chinese Emperor Jen Tsung ordered a new national pharmacopeia be written. More than 1000 drawings were received in Hangchow and the treatment covered over 1000 plants.

1180 A guild of pepper wholesale merchants, a pepperers' guild, was founded in London. Later this organization merged with a spicers' guild. In 1429 the spicers' guild became The Grocers' Company (the word "grocer" from vendre en gros, French for wholesale.) The charter of this organization was to manage trade in spices, drugs, and dyestuffs; these guild members held exclusive right to "garble" - which meant to select and process spices and medicinal products. (Rosengarten, 1969)

c1200 Opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, was introduced to China.

1236 The Statute of Merton gave English manor lords the right to enclose parts of the common woods, waste, and pasture. By 1485 the Tudor move toward increased enclosure further exacerbated problems with tenants, leading to Ket's rebellion in 1549. (Gras, 1946)

1300 Villanova detailed Poems for Health, recommending nut oils for cooking. (Root, 1980)

1315 Through the year 1317, medieval Europe had its worst famine. Following less than half normal crop production in 1315, people began consuming the seed supply for the next year. Wheat prices soared. Over 50% of livestock died, the poor starved. By 1318 bodies in Ireland were disinterred for food. (Ponting, 1991)

1324 William of Ockham established a philosophical viewpoint that avoids complicated explanations: "What can be accounted for by fewer assumptions is explained in vain by more." Called Ockham's Razor, this approach is important in botanical investigations, whereby scientists search for the most "parsimonious" solutions to evolutionary questions. (HNT, first publication in 1495)

1358 The Jacquerie, the first notable European peasant revolt, endured for 2 months. Brigands had so plundered the region (destroying unprotected villages and isolated homesteads, taking loot and food and leaving in their wake death, carnage, ruined homes, destroyed stores, trampled fields, and uprooted vines) that peasant farmers failed to replant for fear of further loss. In desperation peasant countrymen came together, at first in rebellion against deplorable conditions, eventually in retaliation. Though this and other movements were quelled, similar revolts, all stemming from brigandry, manorialism, and feudalism, occurred throughout Europe (most notably in England in 1381 and Germany in 1525) for centuries. These revolts would continue to expand in scope and shift in epicenter, leading to the French Revolution of 1779 and the 1918 Russian Revolution. (Gras, 1946)

1455 Gutenburg printed the first Bible with moveable type. Ancient botanical treatments, available previously only in handscribed versions, could now be printed. Publication of new herbals and simples advanced quickly. [See Theophrastus, c300 BC]

1471 The Opus Ruralium Commodorum was published, based on a manuscript written a century earlier by Peitro Creszenzi of Bologna. Compiled from works of Varro, Columnella, and Cato, with an admixture of Creszenzi's own thoughts, this book was translated into various languages and read extensively. It could be considered the foundation of modern western gardening. (Camp, Boswell, & Magness, 1957)

1480 The dry garden at the monastery of Ryoan, in Kyoto, was built during this decade, apparently reaching completion by 1490.

1487 Diaz worked his way around Africa in search of spice & trade for the Portuguese.

1492 Columbus left Spain, sailing west to search for new routes and sources for importing spices from the East. He returned with corn (Zea mays) and other crop plants.

1493 During Columbus' second voyage he introduced sugar cane to Santo Domingo. By 1516 the first processed sugar was shipped from Santo Domingo to Spain. Soon afterward, Portugal began importing sugar from Brasil. (Sugar cane would become a driving force for the slave trade.) Columbus also carried seed of lemon, lime, and the sweet orange to Hispaniola. He returned to Europe with pineapple. (Viola & Margolis, 1991)

1493-94 Peter Martyr wrote that Columbus brought "pepper more pungent than that from the Caucasus." These capsicum peppers were introduced into Spain in 1493, known in England by 1548, and grown in Central Europe as early as 1585.

1494 Columbus introduced cucumbers and other vegetables from Europe to Haiti.

1497 In reference to citrus, Camoes, in recording his voyages to India wrote:

A thousand trees are seen towards heaven rising,

With beautiful and sweetly-scented apples;

The orange, wearing on its lovely fruit

The colour Daphne carried in her hair;

Bent low, nay almost fallen to the ground,

The citron, heavy with is yellow load;

And, last, the graceful lemon with its fruit

Of pleasant smell and shaped like virgins' breasts. (Tolkowsky, 1938)

1497 Vasco de Gama opened Portuguese trade around the Cape of Good Hope. On 20 May 1498 he arrived at Calicut, on the west coast of India. Having left Lisbon on 8 July 1497, under orders from the King of Portugal, he followed the route (discovered by Diaz 11 years before) around the Cape of Good Hope. His arrival in India marked the first voyage from Europe. This trip and the subsequent voyage of Cabral broke the Venetian monopoly on the sugar and the spice trade. (Rosengarten, 1969; Root, 1980)

1499 In his Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Francesco Colonna described dream-like scenes (some illustrated) of mansion, forest, and garden, that influenced writers, artists, architects, and designers well into the 17th century. (Thacker, 1979)

c1500 Bean and lima bean, crops native to America, became known to Europeans. By the late 1700's the lima bean was grown in Africa, Europe, India, and the Philippines. By 1500 the sweet potato had been taken to Spain, where it was in cultivation by mid-century. This root was soon cultivated in China, India, and Malaya. [See 1648]

1500 The Indian population of Brasil numbered about 2.5 million before European settlement. That population today is less than 200,000. (Ponting, 1991)

1502 The island of St. Helena was discovered by J. de Nova, and would soon become a garden site for fresh provisions to break the several month voyage between Portugal and Mozambique. At the end of the century, James Lancaster would take with him bottled lemon juice and "by this means the Generall cured many of his men, and preserved the rest." (Tolkowsky, 1938)

1505 The first enslaved African reached the New World. At least 9.5 million Africans would be brought to the New World, fully 2.5 million would be deployed in the Carribbean area, where they worked substantially in the sugar industry. For 360 years slavery was the key labor source for the New World sugar industry. (Mintz in Viola & Margolis, 1991)

1505 The Portuguese settled Ceylon. Their exploitation of the cinnamon forests led to a system of slavery and a monopoly on trade in this spice. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1511 Western explorers discovered that the Molucca Islands (the Spice Islands) were the source of cloves. See Root (1980) for detail of intrigue that followed. Eventually [see 1773] one tree planted by Pierre Poivre parented orchards in Madagascar and Zanzibar. These countries nearly provide the world supply today.

1511 Having won battles over Muslim forces, the Portuguese advanced their control over spice producing areas of India, Ceylon, Java, Sumatra - and by 1514, the Spice Islands. For nearly 100 years great Portuguese wealth would flow from control of the spice trade. [See 1605] (Rosengarten, 1969)

1514 Alvarez was the first European to reach China by sea. In the region of Canton the Portuguese encountered oranges superior in sweetness and fragrance even to those brought from India and Ceylon. (Tolkowsky, 1938)

1516 The banana was introduced to the New World from Africa. (Heiser, 1981)

1518 Duarte Barbosa, in An Account of the Countries bordering on the Indian Ocean and their Inhabitants describes sweet oranges in Ceylon. A later book by Garcia da Orta, 1562, one of the earliest European books printed in India, commented that the oranges of Ceylon "are the best of the whole world in regard to sweetness and abundance of juice." Prior to the discovery that China harbored sweet oranges, Europeans were less accustomed to consuming the fruit and considered them more valuable for their fragrance. (Tolkowsky, 1938)

1519 Magellan began his circumnavigation of South America, exploring trade routes. Nearly 3 years later, on 8 September 1522, 18 of the original 250 crewmen (lacking Magellan, who died on the isle of Mactan in April, 1521) returned to Seville, with 1 of the 5 ships that started (only the Victoria made the entire voyage). Even given such great losses, the 26 tons of cloves, sacks of nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon, and load of sandalwood returned to Spain covered the entire expedition cost. The returning captain, Sebastian del Cana, was given a pension and awarded a coat of arms that displays two cinnamon sticks, three nutmegs, and 12 cloves. A journal detailing exploits of this voyage was maintained by Antonio Pigafetta, gentleman-adventurer, and published subsequently as Primo Viaggio Intorno al Mondo. (Rosengarten, 1969; Boorstin, 1983)

1521 Hernando Cortes conquered Mexico. While on reconnaissance in southeastern Mexico, his soldiers were the first Europeans to discover the delights of the Aztecan spice, vanilla. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1522 Pigaphetta, following three years of voyage to the Moluccas, wrote that "in all the islands of the Moluccas there are to be found cloves, ginger, sago which is wood-bread, rice, ...pomegranates, both sweet and sour oranges, lemons..." as well as: "the betel-nut is a fruit which they keep chewing together with flowers of jasmine and orange," and " the cannibals of the islands...eat no other part of the human body but the heart, uncooked but seasoned with the juice of oranges and lemons." (Tolkowsky, 1938)

1530 Brunfels published Herbarium Vivae Eicones, the first newly written and printed botanical book/herbal.

1532 Francisco Pizarro conquered Peru.

1533 The first professorship in botany, created at the university in Padua, established plant study as a discipline separate from medicine. That position was filled by Francesco Bonafede. The following year Luca Ghini became a lecturer in botany at Bologna. (Morton, 1971)

1536 Spaniards completed the conquest of Peru and soon began to use potatoes as cheap food for sailors. The first English publication describing potatoes was Gerard's 1597 herbal. By 1700 potatoes were important in Germany, and by 1800, important in Russia.

1541 Jacques Cartier introduced cabbage to Canada on his third voyage. The first written record of cabbage in the US is 1669.

1541 The first book to promote cooking with sugar was available in Venice. Later Nostradamus wrote the first French book on this topic. (Root, 1980)

1542 Fuchs published De Historia Stirpium Commentarii. By 1543 he had published the German version, New Kreüterbuch. Illustrations for his herbals were based on studies of living plants, rather than on the simplified images that had become common in various scribed editions of the Apuleius herbal. [See c. 350] The text, however, was taken essentially from Dioscorides. (HNT) Much later, the plant genus Fuchsia was named in his honor.

1543 What may be the first botanical garden, the first garden of "simples," was established by Luca Ghini at the University in Pisa - on a site different from that of the present garden.

1545 The botanical garden was established at Padua, Italy.

1550 Introduced to China by 1550, corn grew so quickly in importance that this crop became a significant factor in the 18th century increase in the Chinese population, particularly in inland areas where rice was not prolific. (Today China is the world's second largest producer of corn.)

1550 By this year, tomatoes (introduced from the New World) were regularly consumed by Italians. [See 1554] (Morton, 1981)

1550 Damiao de Goes described orange exports from Portugal to Spain. The date follows very quickly after the tradition that J. de Castro, on returning from India, brought the sweet orange and planted it at his country home of Penh Verde. From this tree, all of the Portugal type sweet oranges were descendent. (Tolkowsky, 1938)

1551 Jerome Bock published his Kreüterbuch, one of the first herbals to include the author's own plant descriptions from first-hand observations - rather than copying the work of Dioscorides. (HNT)

1554 First written record of the tomato. Italians grew the plant by about 1550. Thomas Jefferson was the first American to grow tomatoes, in 1781. Tomatoes were eaten in New Orleans by 1812. George W. Carver dedicated himself to promoting the tomato, in addition to his work on peanuts.

1554 Though the first description in Europe of kohlrabi was in this year, it was not grown commercially (that was accomplished in Ireland) until 1734. Records of this vegetable in the US date from 1806.

1556 Tobacco cultivation began in Europe with an importation of seed by André Thevet. (Simpson, 1989) Introduction to Europe is reported as 1559 by De Wolf. (Punch, 1992)

1560 Three olive saplings were planted in Lima, Peru by the Spaniards, one of which was later taken to Chile. These three trees formed the basis of today's South American olive industry. (Root, 1980)

1561 The posthumously published work of Valerius Cordus established wholly new standards for systematic plant description. His was the first work to uniformly address all aspects of a plant, in standard sequence and parallel treatment. (Morton, 1981)

1564 The European grape vine was imported to California via Mexico, brought by priests.

1565 According to popular history, John Hawkins introduced the potato to Ireland.

1569 Joyful News... published by Monardes from Seville between 1569 and 1574, later published by John Frampton in English, 1577, as Joyfull News out of the Newfounde Worlde. Many new plants are discussed in this book, including tobacco and sunflower (the first mention). By 1596 John Gerard was growing sunflowers in his garden. By 1665 John Ray commented that the flower's popularity had subsided. This seems also to be the first mention in Europe of the American native tree sassafras [See 1586].

1573 The peanut is known to have been cultivated in Chekiang Province, probably arriving with the Portuguese from stops sailors made in Brasil en route to the Orient.

1573 Clusius became court gardener to Maximilian II in Vienna until 1587. He later became a professor at the University of Leiden in Holland, where he introduced and popularized the tulip.

1581 In a series of letters over the years he spent in Portugal (1581-1583) Phillip II of Spain wrote to his two daughters about his love of plants and gardening: "The other day I was given what is contained in this box, being told that it was a sweet lime; and, although I do not believe that it is anything else than a lemon, I longed to send it to you because, should it be a sweet lime then I never saw once so big...I also send you roses and some orange blossoms, that you may see there are some here." It is likely that the Phillip's sweet lime was what we today would call an orange, for the Portuguese called the Indian sweet orange the limon doce. (Tolkowsky, 1938)

1583 De Plantis libri by Andrea Cesalpino became the greatest botanical book of the 16th century and the first general text to supersede ancient writings. In the preceding 2000 years, little had been added to our knowledge about plants. Like his predecessors, Cesalpino accepted anecdotal information, but he advanced plant study with his own contributions in many areas, particularly in his grouping of plants by their physical characteristics (morphology) rather than by their supposed medicinal properties. (HNT) Cesalpino was a student of Luca Ghini [See 1533; 1543.] The bean genus Caesalpinia was named for him.

1586 Francis Drake, on landing at Roanoke, Virginia, heard tales of colonists who had survived on soup made from sassafras. He returned to England with what may have been the first shipment of this plant. As early as 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold (who named Cape Cod and Martha's Vinyard) had shipped material of the plant to England. By 1607 Sassafras was in great demand, sold in English coffeehouses and even on the street. The tea was said to cure a wide range of diseases; the wood, thought to repel insect attack. Today we know that oil of sassafras (out of use since the early 1960s) is substantially the chemical safrole, once used to flavor root beer, but now considered carcinogenic. The most significant commercial use for sassafras today is the manufacture of filé, which is a powder made from young, dried leaves. (Rupp, 1990)

1587 First written description of Brussels sprouts, a form of cabbage. Common in Belgium, this vegetable crop was known in US by 1800.

1594 Through 1597 a great famine struck Europe, caused by four bad harvests. (Ponting, 1991)

1595 Bakers in Montpellier, France were forced to use bushes to fire their ovens because there remained no forest in the area to supply firewood. Europe would continue to face energy shortages based on dwindling forest reserves. Eventually reliance would move to coal, then to petroleum (remember, even these fossil fuels are based on plant life), which would mark a major shift in the history of civilization, from renewable to non-renewable energy sources. (Ponting, 1991)

1596 L. Shih Chen published Pen Ts'ao Kang Mu, the most well-known and praised of Chinese herbals. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1597 Gerard published the first edition of his Herball, followed eventually by a second edition in 1633.

1600 Britains East India Company was founded. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1601 Jean Robin published a catalog for his medicinal herb garden.

1602 Shareholders formed The United (Dutch) East India Company, with bad consequences for Portuguese traders. [See 1605] (Rosengarten, 1969)

1603 Spigelius published the first instructions on making dried herbarium specimens (in his Isagoges in Rem Herbarium) - a technique that had only come into practice during the previous 50 years. The collecting, exchange, archiving, and study of pressed, dried plants that are mounted to sheets of paper engendered a quiet revolution in taxonomy, floristics, and systematics. (Morton, 1981)

1605 James I issued letters of incorporation to London's Worshipful Company of Gardeners.

1605 The Dutch began seizing control of Portuguese-held trade with the Spice Islands (the Moluccas), gaining full control by 1621. By 1681 a plan to eliminate trees in most areas of the Moluccas and to concentrate cultivation of nutmeg and cloves on only two islands had the desirable effect of raising prices and tightening management of supply. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1608 Jean Robin and Pierre Valet published the first European florilegium, Jardin du Roy tres Chrestien Henri IV. It was followed closely by Florilegium Novum (1611-1614) and Florilegium Renovatum (1641) by Jean Theodore de Bry, Besler's Hortus Eystettensis (1613), Emanuel Sweert's Florilegium (1612), and Hortus Floridus by Crispin de Passe (1614). These books covered extensive numbers of horticultural floral forms. For example, Besler's work included 660 species and more than 400 variants (doubles, variegates, etc); 400 of his plants had medicinal value, 180 were used in cooking, and 250 were grown principally for ornament. Besler's book included numerous forms of lilies, campanulas, delphiniums, hollyhocks, scabiosas, iris, tulips, narcissus, roses, hyacinths, and anemones.

1609 Jamestown colonists planted cucumbers and carrots in their gardens.

1610 The practice of drinking tea was first introduced to Europe, and to England in 1644.

1610 By this year, huge sugar plantations in the province of Bahia, Brasil were run by 2,000 white settlers, 4,000 black slaves, and 7,000 Indian slaves.

1612 The 225 square mile, 13 foot deep Lake Beemster in Holland was drained to create 17,000 acres of fertile land. The draining required 43 windmills. In the hundred years from 1550 to 1650, nearly 400,000 acres of Dutch land were reclaimed for agriculture. (Ponting, 1991)

1620 Although some advances in observation of nature had been made in the previous century, Francis Bacon's call for method in scientific investigation in his Novum organum (HNT) prompted a new spirit of investigation. His method rejected "the dogma and deduction" of ancient philosophers who ignored the value of observation.

1621 A thanksgiving feast was held in mid-October by Plymouth Colony Pilgrims in appreciation of assistance from members of the Massasoit tribe and celebration of the first harvest. (Milestones, Pen, 1974)

1622 Native Americans killed 1/3 of the Virginia population of European settlers in retaliation for the encroachment of these immigrants on Indian cornfields. (Root, 1980)

1623 Gaspard Bauhin produced the Pinax, a monumental compilation that pulled together uncoordinated plant names and descriptions that had appeared in Theophrastus and Dioscorides, as well as in later herbals and other plant records. By accepting Bauhin's compilation, Linnaeus was able to avoid many of the complications of the ancient literature. (HNT)

1625 Francis Bacon published his essay 'Of Gardens,' in which he imagined an ideal garden, a princely 30-acre Eden.

1629 John Parkinson published Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris.

1634 Until 1637 the zeal of collectors inflated values of tulip cultivars. This Tulipomania eventually fell victim to a market collapse that affected the entire Dutch economy.

1635 The Jardin des Plantes was established in Paris by royal edict.

1636 The Portuguese were expelled from Deshima, their Japanese trade island; the Dutch were allowed on-going contact with Japanese traders, through Hirado and eventually Deshima in 1641.

1636 The Dutch occupied Ceylon, forcing villagers to supply quotas of cinnamon, as had the Portuguese previously. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1637 Tradescant f. (the son, filius, of elder Tradescant) made his first trip to Virginia, returning to England with living material of bald cypress and American sycamore. Tradescant f. made his second trip to Virginia in 1642.

1646 J. B. Ferrarius published his 500 page compendium of all known information on citriculture, Hesperides, sive De Malorum aureorum Cultura et Usus Libri Quator (Hesperides, or Four Books on the Culture and Use of the Golden Apples). He relates a fable of citrus in which the three daughters of Hesperus, the Hesperides, fled to Italy from Africa. Aegle took her citrons to the country near Lake Garda, Arethusa bore her lemons to Liguria, and Hesperthusa sowed seed of oranges in the Campania Felix. Among his many woodcut illustrations is figured the navel orange, a form we tend to think of as modern. (Tolkowsky, 1938)

1647 Rice was introduced into cultivation in the Carolinas. Today California, Arkansas, Louisiana, & Texas are the main rice producing states. (Heiser, 1981)

1647 Correspondence from the Caribbean to Gov. Winthrop of Massachusetts confirmed that workers at sugar plantations would require food provisions from the outside, because the production of sugar was more profitable than the production of other provisions. The most important export for Massachusetts was salt cod sold to feed slaves in West Indian plantations. Returning ships brought quantities of sugar and molasses sufficient to spur the New England rum industry. (Root, 1980)

1648 Sweet potatoes were in cultivation in Virginia.

1648 Jean Baptiste van Helmont reported one of the earliest and most spectacular experiments in plant physiology and nutrition. A five pound willow tree was planted in 200 pounds of dry soil. It was watered and allowed to grow for five years. At the end of this period, the total gain in weight was one hundred and sixty-nine pounds and three ounces, while the soil had lost only two ounces. Van Helmont guessed that water is a complex substance which is changed into plant material.

1650 By this year coffee had arrived in England. By 1675 there would be over 3,000 coffee houses in that country. (Simpson, 1989)

1650 From this time until the 20th Century the Carribbean was the world center for growing sugar cane.

1651 Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae... (HNT) was published, 80 years late. This work resulted from one of the earliest explorations of the natural history of the New World, made in 1570 by Francisco Hernández, private physician to Philip II of Spain. He was sent to assess natural resources and reported on more than 1000 plants that were considered medicinally important by the natives of Mexico. Some of the plants he described and preserved as botanical specimens are now extinct.

1651 Britain's Navigation Act required that all imports from the colonies be received on British ships.

1652 The first New England pine trees were felled for British ship masts. By 1696 British warships were built in North America. By 1775 easy sources of wood for masts had been stripped from Eastern North America. (Ponting, 1991) The pine tree was used as a symbol on the first American-made coin, issued this in Boston. [See 1761}

1652 Capetown was founded. The Dutch sent two ships to Table Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa to establish a garden to provide fresh foods and fruits for sailors on their voyages by the Cape of Good Hope. By 1679 the garden included ornamental plants from upcountry regions of Africa, as well as edible and decorative plants from China, Java, Zanzibar, etc. By 1700 plants native to Table Bay had become common in Holland. Among those plants were the calla (Zantedeschia aethiopica), bird of paradise (Strelitzia reginae, named in honor of Queen Charlotte Sophia, wife of George III), and impatiens (Impatiens holsti). [See 1772]

1654 Tradescant f. made his third trip to Virginia. By this time he had introduced tulip poplar and red maple to England.

1658 Oliver Cromwell died of malaria, refusing to take the only known treatment (quinine from cinchona), because it was introduced by Jesuits. By 1681 cinchona was universally accepted as antimalarial. (Simpson, 1989) Amsterdam "was lighted up as for a great deliverance and children ran along the canals, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead." (Durant) [See 1820]

1661 Robert Boyle carefully experimented with increase in plant biomass (as had van Helmont). In an effort to determine what had happened to the water taken up by plants, he actually boiled the liquid away from the plant tissue and found a coal-like residue. (The sceptical chymiste..., HNT)

1663 William Penn wrote in a letter dated 16 August, from Philadelphia, that all Indian plantations included peaches of good quality. (Root, 1980) In his 1682 Carolina, or a Description of the Present State of that Country, Thomas Ashe stated "the Peach Tree in incredible numbers grows wild." (De Wolf in Punch 1992) This demonstrates how quickly a valuable plant (such as the peach, which is native to Persia) can be distributed and accepted.

1665 In his, Micrographia, Robert Hooke detailed the structure of cork and described "cells" for the first time, as studied using that new instrument, the microscope.

1669 Robert Morrison was named Professor of Botany at Magdalen College, the first recognition of botany as an academic discipline in England.

1671 Nehemiah Grew published The Anatomy of Plants Begun and Marcello Malpighi published Anatome Plantarum Idea. These independent studies are the first important descriptions and statements on the subject of plant internal structure (Anatomy). Both researchers continued to work in this field for several more years, resulting in new editions by Malpighi and, in 1682, Grew's Anatomy of Plants. The studies of Malpighi and Grew proved of such quality that little was added for over 100 years. These men explained the structure of buds, the organization of wood, the character of flowers and their separate parts, the generation of seed and embryo, and many other topics that had never been explored before.(HNT) (Morton, 1981)

1672 Robert Morison published the first scientific study of a single plant group (the carrot family) [the first monograph.] (HNT)

1673 The Chelsea Physic Garden was established by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London.

c1675 Slave traders brought cowpeas to Jamaica. A native of India, this pea has many varieties important in the southeastern US, particularly the black-eye and the crowders.

1676 Jimsonweed gained its common name (originally Jamestown weed) when British soldiers in Virginia mistook Datura for an edible plant and "turn'd fool" with hallucinations that endured for eleven days. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1678 John Bannister arrived in Virginia as a minister, but more effectively as collector and naturalist for Lord Bishop of London, Rev. Henry Compton. He began to send plant material to England, including Magnolia virginiana and Rhododendron viscosum. (Compton died while collecting in 1692).

1679 Leeuwenhoek published a scientific letter estimating the carrying capacity of Earth to be 13.385 billion people. His figure was based on total land area as compared to the number of people (120) supported per square kilometer in Holland. (Cohen, 1995)

1686 John Ray, in his Historia plantarum (published in volumes through 1704) arrived at an early natural grouping of plants through looking at their many different characteristics. His study dealt with plants worldwide, establishing much of our modern botanical terminology and summarizing the current state of botanical knowledge. His definition of species was quite modern: "each produces only its own kind; one must distinguish between essential, accidental, and environmental characters." Ray's summary of plant physiology was so thorough that he could be considered the founder of that field. (HNT) (Isely, 1994)

1693 The first record of the grapefruit in the West Indies was made by Hans Sloane in a catalog of Jamaican plants. It is assumed the grapefruit originated there. This plant was not introduced to Florida until nearly 1850.

1693 Famine struck northern Europe. By 1694 fully 10% of the population of northern France had perished as a result.

1694 Joachim Camerarius wrote a scientific letter (later published by Valentini in his Polychresta exotica, 1700, HNT) that made the first clear case for the nature of sex in plants and the actual role of pollen and ovule in this process.

1706 Coffee trees were sent to the botanical garden in Amsterdam from Sri Lanka (where the Dutch had only recently managed to establish plantations, breaking an ancient Arab monopoly). A single tree survived, which was the parent of a single tree at the conservatory in Paris. In 1723, de Cliey carried a single offspring from the Paris tree to Martinique, which yielded thousands of trees there by 1777. The Martinique plantations became the source of the first plants to be taken to the various coffee-growing regions of South America. (Simpson, 1989)

1709 Famine struck Europe, affecting Prussia on a great scale. (Ponting,1991)

1709 Anthony Ashley Cooper, in The Moralists, expressed the growing appreciation of the natural landscape, as contrasted with formal order in a garden. His character, Philocles, converts to a love of the "primitive state," of "the horrid Graces of the Wilderness," and "the Genius of the Place." (Thacker, 1979)

1712 Engelbert Kaempfer published Amoenitates Exoticae, the first western description of the Japanese flora (as well as other information). Kaempfer was a physician with the Dutch East India Company at Deshima from 1690 to 1692. Other Kaempfer notes, published by Hans Sloane as History of Japan, include the first western description of ginkgo.

1712 Mark Catesby made his first trip to Virginia.

1712 Captain Frezier introduced the Chilean strawberry, Fragaria chiloensis, to France. It arrived in Britain a few years later. This plant, along with the North American species taken to France by Jean Robin in 1624, is in the ancestry of today's commercial strawberries.

1716 The first certain account of plant hybridization was provided in a letter written by Cotton Mather, discussing the "infection" of Indian corn planted alongside yellow corn. The following year a British hybrid dianthus was described. In 1721 a hybrid cabbage was reported. By 1750 the controversy of sex in plants was in the news. By 1760 plant hybridization was a professional occupation. The study, hybridization, and selection of corn continued. By 1969 scientists understood more about corn genetics than the genetics of any other flowering plant. (Zirkle in Ewan, 1969) [See 1761]

1718 Sébastian Vaillant was one of the earliest supporters of Camerarius's ideas concerning the sexual nature of plants. He contributed to the development of terminology necessary to discuss flower structure and function (some of which shocked his contemporaries). Originally Vaillant delivered his information in a talk at the Jardin du Roi in Paris. By 1718 he had published the remarks as Discours sur la structure des fleurs... (HNT)

1722 Mark Catesby made a trip to South Carolina.

1722 Philip Miller began management of the Chelsea Physic Garden.

1727 Stephen Hales' work in his Vegetable Staticks represented the first significant publication in plant physiology. He explained some aspects of water uptake by roots, movement of liquid through plants, and evaporation of water from leaves. Hales was one of the first to use the equipment and methods of the physical sciences to study plants. (HNT)

1729 China banned opium. That ban on importation would be seriously compromised by the British East India Company until 1839.

c1730 By this time Ginkgo biloba was in cultivation in the botanical garden at Utrecht. [See Kaempfer, 1712]

1733 John Bartram of Philadelphia began correspondence with Collinson, Miller, and others. Their exchange is the likely source of pawpaw, sourwood, and other American plants introduced to cultivation in Europe. (Spongberg, 1990)

1733 John Kay patented the fly-shuttle, which quickened the weaving of cloth, thus mechanizing weaving - while the generation of thread through spinning remained a cottage industry. In 1764, James Hargreaves's spinning jenny made the thread generating process more efficient. Further improvements in bleaching and dyeing as well as the steam-powering of looms would change the British textile industry - with production soaring from 2.5 million pounds in 1760 to 22 million pounds in the 1780s. (Milestones, Twilight, 1974)

1737 Linnaeus published Hortus Cliffortianus, with illustrations by Ehret. This record of plants cultivated by George Clifford in his garden at Hartekamp (Holland) is the forerunner of Species Plantarum. The illustrations demonstrate Linnaeus' belief that botanical drawings should be of superb detail and must result from close collaboration between botanist and artist. (HNT)

1739 About 500,000 people died in Ireland due to widespread crop failure of potatoes. [See 1845](Ponting, 1991)

1741 The President of the First Continental Congress, Henry Middleton, began creating his gardens at Middleton Place, South Carolina. (McGuire in Punch 1992)

1747 Bernard de Jussieu received seed of Sophora japonica from d'Incarville in Beijing, via Moscow. This shipment probably also included Koelreuteria paniculata.

1747 A process to extract sugar from beet roots was developed by Andreas Margraff. It was not until 1877 that a highly productive process would be devised. At the end of the 19th century, sugar beet production expanded greatly in the US. Through selection by specialists, the sugar content of beets increased from just 2% in the 19th century to over 20%. (Simpson, 1989)

1747 Dr. James Lind experimented with 12 sailors who had scurvy and discovered that consuming lemons and oranges for 6 days effected great improvement. Nearly 50 years passed before the British admiralty required that sailors receive daily lemon or lime juice. Scurvy is, or course, a nutritional disease caused by lack of adequate Vitamin C (ascorbic acid). Fresh fruits and vegetables are excellent sources of this vitamin. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996) [See 1937]

1748 Michel Adanson, a student of Bernard de Jussieu, arrived in Africa to collect until 1754.

1751 Miller planted tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima) seed received from French Jesuit Father, Pierre Nicholas le Cheron d'Incarville, stationed at the mission in Beijing. Once introduced to North America, this tree would escape and become quite common - even invasive. Its popular fame is as the tree that grew in Brooklyn. (Spongberg, 1990)

1751 First printed record of Chinese cabbage and Chinese mustard in England.

1753 Linnaeus' Species Plantarum established a new standard for plant classification as well as nomenclature. This treatise eventually became recognized as the beginning point for today's binomial nomenclature. (HNT)

1756 The British government purchased the right to export 600,000 Russian trees each year to supply the Royal Navy. (Ponting, 1991)

1759 The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, was established on the property belonging to the Dowager Princess of Wales. This institution was to remain a private activity of the royal family for 82 years.

1760 Kew received one of its first tropical orchids Epidendrum rigidum; Kew received Vanilla sp. by 1765

1760 Governor Arthur Dobbs discovered Venus Fly-trap in North Carolina and sent a description to Collinson, in England. (Ewan, 1969)

1761 Joseph Kölreuter was the first scientist to report making hybrids between plants and the first to observe the role of insects in pollination. Having studied the works of Camerarius and others, he was aware of areas requiring more investigation. (HNT)[See 1716, & 1877]

1761 John Hill established an association between tobacco snuff and malignant (and fatal) nose polyps. (Lewis & Elvin-Lewis, 1977)

1761 By this year British land grants in New England required that pine trees, most notably white pine, that were suitable as ship masts be conserved - to be cut only under license by the crown. Appointed surveyors marked trees to be protected with the "king's broad arrow," a triangular scar. This decree, among many others, greatly perturbed American colonists. The first flag used by Revolutionaries bore the image of a single white pine - representing the state of Massachusetts. [See 1652] (Rupp, 1990)

1763 Michel Adanson's Familles des plantes became the first general attempt to group plants based on their relatedness, a "natural system." The entry for each of his natural families presents a variety of characters common to the group. (HNT)

1764 The spinning jenny was invented by James Hargreaves. [See 1733]

1765 The Bartrams discovered the Franklin tree. Not until another trip, in 1773, would the younger Bartram collect seed in the only known population, near Fort Barrington, GA. In 1774, the supporter of this trip, John Fothergill, presented seedlings to Kew. Publication of William's travel accounts was completed by 1781, but awaited identification of plants from specimens he had sent to Fothergill. At Fothergill's death in 1780, his herbarium was purchased by Joseph Banks. (Spongberg, 1990)

1766 Joseph Banks explored Newfoundland and Labrador, charting waters and making collections.

1769 Sweet oranges were established at San Diego mission. In 1804 the first sizeable citrus orchard in California was established at the San Gabriel mission.

1769 On 10 October, Portola's exploration of the California coast reached low hills forested by very tall trees that were red in color. This became the first recorded siting of the coast redwoods. [See 1784] (Rupp, 1990)

c1770 William Hamilton built his magnificent 300 acre estate, The Woodlands, near Philadelphia. His interest in importing exotic plants made the grounds, landscaped in European style, a center for future plant introductions to US gardens.

1770 Australia was "discovered" by the British (though the Dutch had already named the area New Holland and had experienced at least 15 landings since 1606.) James Cook set out on the Endeavor on a scientific mission in 1768, with the young naturalists Joseph Banks and Daniel Charles Solander (a pupil of Linnaeus), as well as artists. On 29 April 1770, the ship stood into Botany Bay, which Cook originally called Sting Ray Harbor, but the great collection of new plants by Banks and Solander provoked him to change the name.

1770 An entire year's supply of nutmeg and cloves was destroyed in Amsterdam with the goal of maintaining high prices. Beginning in the 17th century Dutch traders had gained control of spice production in the Moluccas (at the expense of the Portuguese). Short supply kept prices high enough to create fortunes. (Root, 1980)

1771 By this year the Prince Nursery on Long Island offered 42 varieties of pear.

1772 Carl Pieter Thunberg and Francis Masson arrived in South Africa independently (though they often collected together). Masson would send over 500 plant species to Kew. Thunberg's study was mainly scientific, but he sent such specialties to Sweden as the strelitzia. [See 1652]

1772 Joseph Banks was appointed scientific advisor for the royal gardens by George III.

1773 Americans were displeased by a 3% tax imposed by the English Parliament on tea and other products. That small tax added to a 100% import duty that all English subjects already paid on tea, and led to an increase in smuggling of tea from Holland. Loss of business of the London-based John Company resulted in the Tea Act of 1773, which eliminated the 100% tax - meaning the Dutch would be undersold. Even though this change represented a savings for American tea drinkers, the monopoly granted to the John Company carried a 3% tax for colonists who had no representation in Parliament. The uniting of American colonists resulted in some ships being turned away at their ports, but for others (in Boston, Greenwich, Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, Annapolis, and Edenton), boarding parties threw consignments of tea into the water. (Pratt, 1982)

1773 French explorer Pierre Poivre was able to take propagation material of spices (clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, and black pepper) from the Dutch controlled Molucca Islands to Mauritius and Reunion, breaking the Dutch monopoly. [See 1770] (Root, 1980)

1774 Joseph Priestley reported (Experiments and observations on different kinds of air, HNT) that burning a candle in a closed container changes the quality of the atmosphere so the flame is extinguished. Animals placed in that environment quickly die. A living sprig of mint renews the air so a candle will once again burn. Today we know that the non-flammable air is carbon dioxide; growing a plant in such an environment replenishes the oxygen which is necessary to sustain life. On learning of his results, Benjamin Franklin, a correspondent of Priestley's, commented in a letter: "I hope this [rehabilitation of air by plants] will give some check to the rage of destroying trees that grow near houses, which has accompanied our late improvements in gardening from an opinion of their being unwholesome."

1774 Thomas Jefferson planted olive cuttings at Monticello - unsuccessfully. In 1791, he sent several hundred cuttings from France to South Carolina, only to be disappointed by the lack of commercialization. He was unaware that the Padres who established missions in California had planted olives there by 1769.

1774 The bleaching effect of chlorine was discovered. This replaced much more complex and less effective methods previously used to eliminate the natural color of plant fibers used for yarn and cloth. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1775 Carl Pieter Thunberg arrived at Nagasaki harbor to work at Deshima with the Dutch East India Company. Thunberg received medical training in Sweden, and had been a student of Linnaeus. He was surprised to learn he had considerable freedom to collect dried specimens of plants on the Japanese mainland around Nagasaki. There he collected Hovenia dulcis and Rosa rugosa. Thunberg returned to Europe in 1776, having essentially smuggled his specimens out of Japan. He published his flora in 1784. (Spongberg, 1990)

1778 Joseph Banks began his 42-year stint as president of the Royal Society.

1778 John Fothergill brought Cymbidium ensifolium and Phaius tankervilliae to England from China. These are the first Asiatic orchids to appear in England.

1779 Jan Ingenhousz's Experiments upon vegetables... (HNT) showed that plants produce oxygen in sunlight and carbon dioxide in darkness. This work added to studies by his friend Priestley, but unlike Priestley, who was interested primarily in the nature of gases, Ingenhousz was concerned with the physiology of plants.

1779 Opposing Austrian and Prussian armies came to a stalemate in Bohemia when both armies consumed the local potato stores to depletion. The resulting lack of food combined with cold weather forced a retreat of both sides. Today this War of Bavarian Succession is still sometimes called "The Potato War." (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1780 John Hannon, financed by Dr. James Baker, started the first chocolate factory in the US in Dorchester, Mass. (Fussell, 1986) James Baker later founded Baker's Chocolate.

1780 John Fraser traveled from England to Canada to collect plants; he entered US territory in 1785, receiving financial support from William Forsyth (Curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden), William Aiton (Head Gardener at Kew) and James Smith (President of the Linnean Society). He returned to America in 1788 and again in 1796. Fraser (and son) returned yet later as collectors for the Russian Czar and Czarina. Their work was commemorated through plant names, Fraser fir and Fraser magnolia.

1780 Thomas Minton, a potter's apprentice, originated the pattern we call Blue Willow. (Rupp, 1990)

1782 Oliver Evans contracted to build a flour mill on Red Clay Creek, north of Wilmington, Delaware. His "improvements" produced the first automated mill. One person could run an automated mill and produce 20 barrels of flour in a day. Ordinary mills required one person for ten barrels. (Storck & Teague, 1952)

1784 Hamilton introduced ginkgo, Acer platanoides, and tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima) to his garden near Philadelphia (the tree of heaven had first been planted in Europe by Miller at the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1751). Tree of heaven is now a major weed tree for eastern North America, and is "The Tree" that grew in Brooklyn. (Spongberg, 1990)

1784 Thunberg published Flora Japonica. [see 1775]

1784 Junipero Serra died and was interred beneath the floor of Mission San Carlos Borrome in Carmel - in a redwood coffin. [See 1769] (Rupp, 1990)

1785 André Michaux sailed to southeastern America. There he encountered wild populations of Cherokee rose, which he believed to be native. The plant appears to have come to North America with early Spanish explorers or settlers, as it is native to China, and had been cultivated in Moslem countries. Similarly, when William Penn acquired Penn's Woods from the Indians, he found they were already cultivating the peach (another China native) in their gardens. [See 1663]

1785 William Withering, an English country doctor, published An Account of the Foxglove and Some of Its Medical Uses: With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases. His study began in 1775 when asked to investigate a home remedy for dropsy. The active principals, digitoxins, in foxglove both slow heart rate and increase the strength of each heart beat. This improves circulation and therefore alleviates edema - which is the basis for dropsy. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1785 Dr. Edward Bancroft was awarded exclusive rights by the British Parliament to use the yellow coloring agent which he had extracted from black oak (Quercus velutina) and named quercitron, for the dyeing and printing of fabrics. Taken from the inner bark of the tree, this dye remained commercially available for over 200 years. (Rupp, 1990)

1787 Publication began for Botanical Magazine by William Curtis, the world's longest-running journal, dedicated to introducing exotic plants to an avid audience. Curtis resigned his position as Demonstrator in Botany for the Chelsea Physic Garden to produce this series.

1787 Captain Bligh was relieved of his authority on the Bounty shortly after water-starved sailors cast 1,000 breadfruit plants (that required water to survive and were bound from Tahiti to feed slaves in the West Indies) into the ocean. By 1793 the Providence had accomplished the delivery.

1788 Jean Senebier, in his Expériences sur l'action de la lumière solaire dans la végétation (HNT) established the relationship between the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the production of oxygen by plants. His studies built on the work of Ingenhousz. [See 1779]

1789 Aiton's Hortus Kewensis recorded 15 exotic species of orchid at Kew. They were: Bletia verecunda, Epidendrum fragrans, Epidendrum cochleatum, Phaius grandifolius (syn P. tankervilliae), Cypripedium spectabilis, Cypripedium acaule, Liparis liliifolia, Calopogon pulchellus, Habenaria fimbriata, Arethusa bulbosa, Satyrium carneum, Satyrium coriifolium, Bartholina pectinata, Serapias lingua, and Nigritella angustifolia. Epidendrum cochleatum was the first epiphytic orchid known to have bloomed at Kew, in 1789. (Reinikka, 1972)

1789 Antoine Laurent de Jussieu achieved a workable system of naming and grouping plants in his Genera plantarum, by combining Linnaeus's nomenclature with Adanson's natural system of classification. His treatment provided the basis for the system of classifying plants we use today. The book was published in Paris - during the same year as the French Revolution.

1889 Baptist Reverend Elijah Craig of Scott County, Kentucky, is given credit for first aging Kentucky corn whiskey, thus creating America's first bourbon whiskey. (Fussell, 1992)

1789 Ginkgo was planted at Pierce Arboretum (now part of Longwood Gardens) in Kennett Square, PA. By 1968 that tree was 105 ft. tall and about 13 ft dbh. (Ewan, 1969)

1789 Thomas Jefferson, newly arrived in Philadelphia as Secretary of State, began a career of plant introduction that included vanilla, tea, and tomato.

1790 The soybean was grown at Kew, but had no crop significance at that time for Europe.

1790 Archibald Menzies journied as surgeon-naturalist on Captain George Vancouver's expedition to the Pacific Northwest (until 1795.) (Vancouver had sailed with James Cook on his second and third voyages of discovery.) Menzies collected some dried herbarium material.

1790 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published his interpretation of plant structure, providing one of the earliest statements concerning the similar origins of leaves and floral parts (petals, sepals, stamens, and pistils.) His book provoked numerous commentaries by botanists and served as a catalyst in the development of modern morphological theory. (HNT)

1791 An excise tax on whiskey (to help retire debts from the Revolutionary War) prompted the Whiskey Rebellion that peaked in 1794 near Pittsburgh. The tax was repealed 8 years later. [See 1862] (Fussell, 1992)

1793 Christian Sprengel was the first researcher to publish detailed descriptions of the manner in which different flowers are pollinated. He made the original drawings himself. Sprengel's discoveries would be ignored by botanists until Darwin. (HNT)

1794 Ely Whitney invented the cotton gin (a machine that pulls cottonseed apart from the hairs i.e. the cotton fibers) in 1793. (Simpson, 1989) Patented in 1794, this machine changed American life dramatically. By 1807 the US supplied 60% of Britain's cotton, becoming the world's largest producer by 1820 - with production rising from 3,000 bales in 1790 to 4.5 million bales by 1860. The plantation production of cotton and the manner in which cotton exhausts nutrients from its soil meant that between 1790 and 1860 over 800,000 slaves were moved to the new territories of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. (Ponting, 1991) With increased production, cotton came to underwrite so completely the economy of cotton states that any sentiment against slavery slowly disappeared in the South. Cotton production thus drove the division between North and South.

1795 British colonists planted clove trees in Panang. By 1796 the English had gained control of all Dutch East Indian possessions except Java. [See 1824] (Rosengarten, 1969)

1797 The Rajah, out of Salem, MA, returned to New York with full cargo of bulk pepper from Sumatra. Investors made 700% profit, spawning investment by other Salem merchants. This Salem-based trade flourished until 1856, creating some of the first great fortunes in the US. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1798 Thomas Malthus's discussion of the potential for increase in size of a population (An essay on the principle of population..., HNT) as compared to the available resources provided important ideas for Darwin and others.

1798 Frenchman Nicholas Robert invented the first machinery to manufacture paper. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1799 John Lyon began collecting North American plants, at first for William Hamilton, and later for collectors in Europe. He followed the trails of Catesby, the Bartrams, Michaux, and the Frasiers. Lyon may have contributed to the extinction of the Franklin tree by his aggressive and successful collecting. He sent quantities of oakleaf hydrangea to England, a plant first introduced earlier by Hamilton in 1803.

1799 Agriculturists described sweet corn, long grown by Iroquois. It's value not immediately recognized, sweet corn is the #1 canned "vegetable" in the United States. (Root, 1980)

1799 The Dutch East India Company fell bankrupt. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1800 The soybean was known in Philadelphia, but gained little widespread attention. The bean would be introduced to California agriculture in San Francisco by direct importation from Japan in 1850.

1801 Elgin Botanical Garden was under development at the northern edge of New York City, largely through efforts of David Hosack, a professor at the medical school of Columbia College. Today Rockefeller Center stands on a portion of the 20 acre site once occupied by this garden.

1801 The first Harvard Botanic Garden was established.

1801 John Wedgwood (son of Josiah Wedgwod, uncle to Charles Darwin) wrote William Forsyth (George III's gardener) and Joseph Banks about starting the Royal Horticultural Society - which quickly came into being.

1801 The cast iron process was invented, playing eventually into systems for constructing large conservatories.

1801 The later-day owner of Alexander Pope's renowned estate was driven to removing the garden's famous willow tree in an effort to discourage tourists and lookyloos. (Rupp, 1990)

1802 Bernard M'Mahon established his nursery in Philadelphia and began his own limited publication series similar to Curtis in 1806.

1802 Robert Brown arrived at Sydney (Australia) on the Investigator, along with botanical artist Ferdinand Bauer. George Caley, who had already been sent to collect plants in New South Wales by Banks, was furious. (In 1803 Banks received seed of 170 species from Caley.)

1803 German pharmacist, F.W. Serturner, isolated morphine from opium latex. The three extracts of opium commonly used medicinally are morphine, codeine, and papaverine. (Simpson, 1989)

1803 Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier improved on Robert's paper making machine. The continuous belt of wire mesh that layers the pulp is today called a Fourdrinier Screen. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1804 Nicholas T. de Saussure's book Recherches chimiques sur la végétation (HNT) marked the beginning of modern plant physiology because of its well thought-out, documented experiments and attention to good experimental methodology. He achieved advances in our knowledge of plant nutrition and helped prove that carbon from the atmosphere is fixed into the carbon that makes up organic compounds by plants undergoing photosynthesis. Saussure answered questions concerning the role of water in plant growth.

1804 Lewis and Clark began their expedition. Lewis spent nine months in Philadelphia studying botany under Benjamin Smith Barton to prepare for the journey. The seed they collected were shared by Hamilton at The Woodlands and by M'Mahon. By 1825 Oregon grape holly was widely known and was available commercially from Prince Nursery of Flushing, NY for $25.

1804 Christopher Gore and his wife began the construction of their home and garden in Waltham, MA. Their interest in exotic plants was shared with neighbor Theodore Lyman, who at that time was also improving his estate, The Vales. Both families imported plants from Europe and built greenhouses for tropicals.

1804 Capt. John Chester brought the first shipload of bananas to the US on the Reynard to port in New York. Bananas did not become common in this country until after 1870, when Capt. L. D. Baker began exchange of mining equipment for Jamaican bananas. (Fussell, 1986) [See 1899]

1804 American and European traders began stripping Pacific Islands for sandalwood for use in Europe and China. Sandalwood trees were wiped out on Fiji by 1809, on the Marquesas by 1814, on Hawaii by 1825. (Ponting, 1991)

1804 England's Royal Horticultural Society was formed. Present at the first meeting were John Wedgewood, William Forsyth (Gardener to King George III at Kensington and St. James, Forsythia), Joseph Banks, Charles Greville, Richard A. Salisbury, William Townsend Aiton, and James Dickson. (Fletcher, 1969)

1805 Alexander von Humboldt's personal observations of many different plant habitats resulted in his important generalizations about the relationships of plants to their native climates. He is probably best known for making ecological correlations between the different plant habitats observed with rising elevation and the changing habitats seen when traveling from the tropics to arctic regions. Publication of his Essai sur la géographie des plantes... may be considered the beginning of the science of ecology. (HNT)

1806 Napoleon offered 100,000 francs to anyone who could create sugar from a native plant. Russian chemist K. S. Kirchhof later discovered that sulfuric acid added to potato starch would make the conversion. (Fussell, 1992)

1810 Liverpool Botanic Garden received the first Cattleya known to be cultivated. The plant was sent from Sao Paulo, Brasil, by Mr. Woodforde to Mr. Shepherd at the Garden. Plants from this original introduction are said to have bloomed every subsequent year - though that was never published. (Reinikka, 1972)

1810 Goats introduced to St. Helena Island began devastation that eventually caused extinction of 22 of the 33 endemic plants. (Ponting, 1991)

1810 Robert Brown's Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae marked the beginning of his publications on the flora of Australia. Brown made important comparisons of plants from Australia with other floras, yielding a fresh approach to this type of study. With Brown's work, botanists began to understand that significant information can result from studying the distributions and associations of plants. We also began to realize the distinctive nature of the Australian biota.

1814 Frederick Pursh published his Flora Americae Septentrionalis. He had been engaged originally by Barton in 1805 to study the plant material collected by Lewis and Clark, and later he worked for Hosack at Elgin. In 1809 he returned to London with his own collections of plant material to study.

1816 Henry Hall is credited as the first person to cultivate cranberries.

1816 Crop failure was widespread in Europe, resulting in food riots in England, France, and Belgium. (Ponting, 1991)

1818 The wrought iron process was industrialized, changing the way designers would create conservatory structures.

1820 French chemists isolated quinine (an alkaloid) from the bark of Cinchona, making possible the production of a purified chemical treatment for malaria. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996) [See 1658]

1823 Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold arrived in Japan to live there until 1830 as surgeon major in the Dutch East Indies Army, anxious for a career as a scientific explorer. He restored order to the botanical garden at Deshima. Because he accepted the gift of a map of Japan on his trip to Edo (foreigners were not allowed access to this type of information,) Siebold was imprisoned for a year, but pardoned in 1829. Banished from Japan in 1830, he was forced to abandon his Japanese wife and their child. The deck the vessel on which he sailed was filled with plants he used to establish a nursery in Leiden. Among his introductions were Wisteria floribunda, Hydrangea paniculata, Hydrangea anomala, Malus floribunda and Rhodotypos scandens. He returned to Japan in 1859 and by 1863 produced a sales catalog that offered 838 species native to that country. (Spongberg, 1990)

1823 David Douglas was sent by The Royal Horticultural Society to the Eastern US to procure any new varieties of fruit trees and vegetables that might have been developed there. He met Thomas Nuttall (a British native recently appointed professor of Botany at the Harvard Botanic Garden) and others who helped him. He returned to England with a wide variety of fruit trees, as well as Oregon grape holly. (Spongberg, 1990)

1823 Charles MacIntosh found that fabrics could be made waterproof by treating with natural rubber. [See 1839] The word rubber had been coined for the ability of this resilient material to rub out pencil marks. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1824 After decades of battles between the Dutch and English over control of spice trade with the East Indies, a formal treaty gave the Dutch control of the Malay Archipelago, minus North Borneo. The British were settled with North Borneo, the Malay mainland, India, Ceylon, and Singapore. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1825 David Douglas arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River, and returned to England in 1827. In 1829 he again arrived in the Pacific Northwest, collecting from California to Alaska (and even Hawaii). He died while collecting in Hawaii after falling into a pit trap in which a wild bull was already ensnared. C.V. Piper: "The extent and amount of this man's collections during the three seasons he spent in the Northwest almost surpass belief." Douglas introduced over 200 species to cultivation in Great Britain, including Douglas fir, sugar pine, noble fir, giant fir, etc. (Spongberg, 1990)

1826 Paxton left the Royal Hort. Society garden to become head gardener to the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth. (Fletcher, 1969) [See 1836, 1851]

1826 Twigs (apparently predominately of basket willow) had long been utilized in England to record tax payments. Notches made in each twig indicated the amount of tax paid. Once split the notched twig yielded two records of payment. When the tax records went to paper transaction in 1826, the archive of twigs was burned. The resulting fire escaped control and took with it the Houses of Parliament. (Rupp, 1990)

1826 An act of the US Congress set off the mania of planting silkworm mulberry, a short-lived industry. (Ewan, 1969)

1826 The unexploited forests of Burma gave impetus to the British conquest of that country. The first area opened (Tenasserim) "was stripped of teak within twenty years." By the end of the century about 10,000,000 acres of Burma forest were cleared. (Ponting, 1991)

1828 C. J. van Houten developed the first modern process for making cocoa powder. Soon producers in Holland had learned that alkali could be added to neutralize various acids, making a mild, more soluble cocoa. This process is still called "dutching" today. (Simpson, 1989)

1828 Adolphe Brongniart published the first complete account of fossil plants, establishing himself as the founder of modern paleobotany. He was an early proponent of evolutionary theory. His interpretations of the fossil record also contributed to our understanding of historical changes in climates and plant geography. (HNT)

1830 Robert Brown published the first account of a cellular nucleus, which he called the "aureole" in what is also the first publication describing the growth of pollen tubes from the stigma to the ovule: "On the organs and modes of fecundation in Orchideae and Asclepiadae," in The Transactions of the Linnean Society of London. (HNT)

1830 The first machine for cutting lawns was introduced by Edwin Budding, an English textile-mill engineer. This machine was first imported to the USA 25 years later. (Crotz in Punch, 1992)

1832 By this year 137 different European weeds were naturalized in the New York flora. (Ponting, 1991)

1833 Colley was hired by Bateman to collect orchids in the Demerara region of British Guiana. Sixty species were returned alive from this expedition.

1833 Glass production improved, making manufacture of sheet glass up to 6ft (1.8 m) long possible. Before that time the largest size available was 4 ft (1.2m) in broad glass or 4-5 ft (1.2-1.5m) in crown glass. (A. Bonar, "Cathedrals of Glass", The Garden 115(10):526-530.)

1835 Hugh Cuming commenced a 4-year trip to the Philippines. He was probably the first person to ship living orchids successfully from Manila to England. Plants sent included Phalaenopsis amabilis, first grown at Chatsworth. Cuming distributed 130,000 herbarium specimens.

1835 John Gibson accompanied Lord Auckland to India, via Madeira, Rio de Janeiro, and the Cape of Good Hope. He arrived in Calcutta in March 1836 with plants from Auckland destined for Calcutta Botanical Garden Director, Nathaniel Wallich. Gibson also collected in the Khasia Hills (Chirra Poongee), dispatching his plants through Wallich to England.

1836 Chatsworth conservatory construction was begun, to be completed in 1840. Measuring 272 x 66 ft (83 x 20m), the conservatory was designed and built by Paxton with the help of Decimus Burton (architect).

1837 In reference to tropical orchids, and particularly concerning Cattleya labiata, Gardner wrote: "The progress of cultivations (for coffee plantations, and wood for charcoal) is proceeding so rapidly for twenty miles around Rio, that many of the species which still exist will, in the course of a few years, be completely annihilated, and the botanists of future years who visit the country will look in vain for the plants collected by their predecessors." (Reinikka, 1972)

1837 Robert Schomburgk discovered Victoria regia in British Guiana (name later changed to Victoria amazonica). Early shipments of seed were not successful, until Paxton grew and flowered the plant in a heated tank of the tropical house at Chatsworth in 1849. The entire January 1847 issue of Botanical Magazine was dedicated to this waterlily.

1837 Illinois blacksmith John Deere melded a steel share to a moldboard of wrought-iron to create a plow that cut the prairie soils. Deere's plows became the prairie standard. (Fussell, 1992)

1838 The new viceroy in Canton, China destroyed the British East India Company's illegal opium imports, a total of 2,640,000 pounds. Britain went to war with China, winning Hong Kong, trade concessions, and loot. (Lewis & Elvin-Lewis, 1977)

1838 Charles M. Hovey introduced a strawberry grown from seed produced by hybridization. This 'Hovey' strawberry is considered the first fruit variety that originated through breeding on the North American continent.

1838 John Wright Boott, Boston, MA, received the first recorded shipment of tropical orchids to the US. However, other Bostonians were known to have tropical orchids in cultivation by this year. Boott's collection went to John Lowell, eventually into the hands of Edward Rand. When Rand sold his estate, around 1865, the orchid and tropical plant collection was given to Harvard College (to Cambridge Botanic Garden.) (Reinikka, 1972)

1839 Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward described his Wardian Case in Gardener's Magazine. (Fletcher, 1969) This work was subsequently expanded and published as a book. [see 1842]

1839 Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanization, the heat driven process of combining sulphur with natural rubber. The cross-linking of molecular chains (isoprene units) makes rubber non-sticky, more durable, and more elastic. (Simpson, 1989) Vulcanization changed life in Brasil, causing a rubber boom, with exports rising from 31 tons in 1827 to more than 27,000 tons by 1900. Manaus became a cosmopolitan city. [See 1877] (Ponting, 1991)

1839 Salicylic acid (chemically related to salicin, the compound in willow that gave this plant its pain-relieving powers) was isolated from flowerbuds of Filipendula ulmaria (at that time called Spiraea ulmaria), a member of the rose family native to Europe. In 1853 a number of synthetically prepared derivatives included acetylsalicylic acid. The Bayer Company selected that chemical as a substitute for the commonly used salicylic acid, and named it "aspirin" by combining the letter "a" from acetyl and "spirin" from Spiraea. (Lewis & Elvin-Lewis, 1977)

1839 Prickly pear was introduced to Australia for use as hedging. By 1925 over 60,000,000 acres of Australian land were infested, and prickly pear dominated the vegetation in nearly half that area. Control came eventually in the form of South American caterpillars that feed on the plant. (Ponting, 1991)

1840 The Opium Wars ended mandarin control of British trade with China, followed by the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. This treaty ceded Hong Kong to the British and opened numerous ports to Europeans and Americans. Under an 1858 treaty, foreigners could travel anywhere in the interior of the empire. [See 1997] (Spongberg, 1990)

1840 In the years before paper was manufactured from wood pulp, Isaiah Deck wrote that the increasing demand for paper (at that time made from cotton or linen rags) could be met through recycling Egyptian mummies - each of which provided up to 30 lbs of linen wrapping. Twenty years later I. A. Stanwood of Gardiner, Maine acted on this proposal by importing mummies for manufacturing brown wrapping paper. In Egypt mummies were being used to fuel railroad engines. (Rupp, 1990)

1840 Friedrich Keller patented a wood grinding machine that promoted the use of wood pulp for papermaking. Within 30 years, experimentation with wood pulp paper extended to such short-lived products as coffins, horseshoes, and road surfaces. (Rupp, 1990 - which see for more detail)

1840 Orlando Jones patented an alkaline treatment for starch extraction, impacting the production of wheat, rice, and corn starches. (Fussell, 1992)

1841 Kew Gardens was transferred to the government. William Jackson Hooker became the first director.

1841 Gardener's Chronicle began publication with J. Lindley as horticultural editor.

1841 Andrew Jackson Downing published his Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening Adapted to North America - the most influential early American treatment of this subject. Downing died in a steamboat accident in 1852. (Adams in Punch, 1992)

1842 Nathaniel B. Ward published On the Growth of Plants in Closely Glazed Cases.

1842 Matthias J. Schleiden, and, in 1847, Theodor Schwann synthesized their own observations along with known information to reach a reasonable understanding of plant and animal cell structure. Their work established the theory that the cell is the basic unit of all life, helping to create the new general study of biology. (HNT)

1843 John Lyons published A Practical Treatise on the Cultivation of Orchidaceous Plants (2nd edition 1845), the first book on orchid culture.

1843 Robert Fortune made the first of four journeys to China (ending in 1860), initially for the Royal Horticultural Society, later for the East India Company (as a result he sent 23,892 young tea plants and 17,000 germinated seedlings to northern India), and finally for the US Government. Tea plants Fortune sent to Washington did not succeed, partly because of the War Between the States. Never before had so many Chinese plants gotten to England. His success was based greatly on the newly invented Wardian case. Plants he sent included balloon flower, bleeding heart, golden larch, Chinese fringe tree, cryptomeria, hardy orange, abelia, weigela, winter honeysuckle, etc. (Spongberg, 1990)

1844 John Mercer invented a treatment for cotton that involves stretching the fibers under pressure in a cold bath of caustic soda. Mercerization gives cotton increased sheen and durability, as well as promoting the uptake of dyes. (Simpson, 1989)

1845 In 1841 the Irish population was about 8 million. Estimates are that a working man ate 12-14 pounds of potatoes each day. (Langenheim & Thimann, 1982). In 1845 potato blight was imported to Europe from the Americas. By 1846 the potato crop in Ireland had totally failed. About 1,000,000 people died and another 1,000,000 emigrated. (Ponting, 1991)

1847 Chocolate candy was first created. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1848 In Bangor, Maine, John Curtis produced the first commercial spruce gum - a chewing gum made of resin from spruce trees. By 1852 the Curtises had built a large chewing gum factory in Portland. As supplies of spruce gum diminished, manufacturers tried other chewables, such as paraffin, eventually turning to the latex from the chicle tree (Manilkara zapota.) Chicle became the basis of the American Chicle Company, and for their product, Chicklets. (Rupp, 1990)

1849 William Lobb was sent to the Pacific coast of America by Veitch & Sons to collect plants for the horticultural trade.

1850 The mechanization of agriculture began. Mechanical reapers, and later the internal combustion engine (and consequently the tractor) altered the face of the world - and the growth and increasing urbanization of the world population. Between 1860 and 1920, about 1,000,000,000 acres of new land were brought under cultivation, with another 1,000,000,000 acres coming into production during the following six decades. Improvements in shipping, refrigeration, and processing further industrialized this process. Today's American farmer receives 4% of the price of chicken in the store and 12% of the price of a can of corn. (Ponting, 1991)

1850 John Jeffrey was sent to Oregon by a consortium called the Oregon Association of Edinburgh. His plant introductions to England included incense cedar and Jeffrey pine. (Spongberg, 1990)

1850 Seed of alfalfa (Medicago sativa) were brought by a gold miner from Chile to California, where it thrived as a forage crop. (Heiser, 1981)

1850 President Millard Fillmore invited Andrew Jackson Downing to design an arboretum and pleasure ground as the grounds for the Washington Mall. (Morgan in Punch, 1992)

1851 Hofmeister described alternation of generations in higher plants. (Morton, 1981)

1851 An importation of California grapes to Europe introduced white mildew (oidium), which eventually was treated with flowers of sulphur. The subsequent introduction of California rootstocks as a possible cure brought phylloxera, a much more problematic root aphid which can devastate entire acreages.

1851 The great glass structure, the Crystal Palace, designed by Joseph Paxton as the centerpiece of the first Great Exhibition, was opened. Paxton was knighted for his efforts. (Hix, 1974.)

1851 Hugh Low discovered the giant pitcher plant, Nepenthes rajah, on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo. F. W. Burbidge later introduced this astounding plant to reluctant cultivation.

1852 The Concord grape was discovered. Of uncertain origin, Concord became an important grape for eastern states with humid climates. (Heiser, 1981) It was introduced by Ephraim Wales Bull, of Concord, MA, who selected the clone from seedling wild grapes on his property and presented it to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1853. (Fussell, 1986)

1853 Albert Kellogg (native of South Carolina who had studied at Kentucky's Transylvania College, and later traveled to San Francisco where he had a pharmacy) and six colleagues established the California Academy of Sciences. He brought to a meeting of the group some specimens and stories he had heard from A. T. Dowd about a giant new conifer in the Sierran foothills, southeast of Sacramento. William Lobb, who was at the meeting, left immediately for the area, collecting seed, mature cones, vegetative shoots, and two seedlings. He returned to San Francisco and quickly left for England. The two saplings were planted at the Veitch nursery in Exeter. John Lindley described the new species that December in Gardener's Chronicles as Wellingtonia gigantea. (Spongberg, 1990) The name eventually accepted for this tree was Sequoiadendron giganteum.

1854 Commodore Matthew C. Perry "opened" Japan's doors to the West with signing of the Treaty of Kamagawa. Exchanges between the two countries included an American agricultural exhibit managed by Dr. James Morrow, assisted by S. Wells Williams, a Protestant missionary in China. Dried specimens from this first trip went to Williams' boyhood friend, the Harvard botanist Asa Gray. These specimens were quickly followed by collections from Charles Wright, who had been working in the North Pacific as botanist on a US Surveying Expedition, and was able to go directly to Japan once the treaty was signed. (Spongberg, 1990)

1855 First steps were taken toward eventual production of rayon. After 1900, technology would be developed to allow production of rayon and cellophane. Both are products derived from cellulose extracted from wood chips. (Simpson, 1989)

1856 Calanthe ´dominii flowered. This is the world's first planned orchid hybrid, raised by John Dominy for Veitch & Sons.

1858 Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace were hastily paired to jointly present their ideas "On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection" before the Linnean Society. Darwin had been slow and cautious about publishing his concepts concerning evolution. When a letter describing many of the same, independently conceived ideas arrived from Wallace to be read before the Society, arrangements were made to establish Darwin's priority - as he had been circulating drafts of future publications among friends in London.

1858 Invention of the Mason jar stimulated use of large quantities of white sugar for home preserves, reducing traditional reliance on maple sugar and molasses for home cooking. Usage of white sugar in the United States doubled between 1880 (when the tariff on imported sugar was lowered) and 1915. (Root, 1980)

1858 The Royal Horticultural Society instituted its First Class Certificate of Merit (FCC). By the following year the Floral Committee was established and given management of the FCC (Fletcher, 1969) The first plant to be awarded was Cattleya ´dominiana, shown by the Vetch firm. (Reinikka, 1972)

1859 Asa Gray published his idea that the north American and Eurasian floras had at one time been homogeneous. He proposed that Pleistocene glaciation had separated the floras and through evolution (a new concept he had learned through personal correspondence with Charles Darwin) the species had become distinct. Gray became Darwin's leading advocate in US debates.

1859 Charles Darwin published On the origin of species by means of natural selection.... As explained by Darwin, evolution is a simple change in the overall character of a population of either plants or animals. Gradual change over countless generations can lead to origination of a population sufficiently different to be called a new species. The impact of Darwin's work has been significant in all areas of biology, including the search for natural relationships of plants and interpretations of plant adaptations and ecology. (HNT)

1860 John Gould Veitch sent 17 new species of conifer from Japan to England, as well as seed and plants of other horticulturally valuable stock. His most popular introduction from that trip, however, became Boston ivy, Parthenocissus tricuspidata.

1860 Mr. Shaw's Garden, later to become the Missouri Botanical Garden, in St. Louis, opened to the public.

1860 E. Douwes Dekker published his novel Max Havelaar under pseudonym. A former Dutch Colonial Officer in Java, Dekker revealed the inhumane treatment of native workers in Dutch East Indian colonies. The resulting arousal of public concern forced governmental reforms. The Dutch held control of Javan and Sumatran spice production until WWII. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1861 A new treaty with Japan in 1858 led to a race by American and European plantspeople to collect and introduce plants from these islands. Field collectors included Carl Maximowicz who sent plants to Russia, Max Ernst Wichura from Germany, and Richard Oldham from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (re. Bambusa oldhamii). George Rogers Hall, an American resident of Yokohama, sent a huge shipment in 1861 to Francis L. Lee of Chestnut Hill, MA. Lee went to war and left Francis Parkman, explorer, neighbor, and friend, to curate the growing collection. (Parkman would become Professor of Horticulture at Harvard in 1871). Thomas Hogg (son of a Scottish emigrant and nurseryman, sent to Japan by Lincoln as a US Marshal) shipped plants to his brother, James, as well as to the Parson's firm at Flushing, NY. His introductions included the Japanese stewartia, the fragrant snowbell, the sapphire berry, and the katsura tree. (Spongberg, 1990)

1862 Charles Darwin published the first thorough study of orchid pollination, On the various contrivances by which British and Foreign orchids are fertilised by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing.

1862 Joseph Hooker reported on the discovery two years earlier in West Africa of Welwitschia mirabilis. He considered this find "the most wonderful, in a botanical point of view, that has been brought to light during the present century." (Desmond, 1987)

1862 George Rogers Hall returned to Flushing, NY from Japan and brought seed, plants, and Wardian cases of material which he entrusted to the Parsons & Co. Nursery. Included were the kobus magnolia, the star magnolia, zelkova, Japanese maples, wisterias, raisin tree, etc. Also in this shipment was the future weed, Japanese honeysuckle, initially called Hall's honeysuckle. Some of Hall's plants in Yokohama had been obtained from Siebold. (Spongberg, 1990)[See 1823].

1862 Specimens obtained by Jean Pierre Armand David, a Basque in the Lazarist priesthood who moved to China in 1862, form the basis of Plantae Davidianae, in which Adrien Franchet of the Museum at the Jardin des Plantes described nearly 1500 new species.

1862 The US Morrill Land-Grant College Act was passed. During this same time the US Department of Agriculture was created. These events set the stage for the first State Agricultural Experiment Stations (those in California and Connecticut in 1875). Over 13,000,000 acres of federal land were given to states to support the establishment of colleges for the agricultural and mechanical arts. By 1900 there were 60 Agricultural Experiment Stations. (Baker, in Ewan, 1969)

1862 Partially to deal with Civil War debt, Congress established a Commissioner of Internal Revenue. One tax collected was on whiskey, beginning at $.20 per gallon in 1863, the tax rose to $2 per gallon by 1865. (Fussell, 1992)

1865 Joseph Dalton Hooker became Director of Kew.

1866 Gregor Mendel discovered and published the basic patterns of inheritance and his understanding of the hereditary nature of variation between individuals in a population. It is puzzling that Mendel's works, though highly complementary to Darwin's concepts, were not brought forth for general scientific discussion until after 1900.

1866 Eighteen year old Jack Newton Daniel established his distillery in Tennessee. (Fussell, 1992)

1868 James Arnold left a portion of his estate in trust and Harvard agreed to establish the Arnold Arboretum.

1869 A biologist imported European gypsy moth to the US for study. A few of those insects escaped and established populations that have caused great devastation to Eastern forests. (Shetler in Viola & Margolis, 1991)

1870 Japanese plum (Prunus salicina) arrived in the US in 1870 when a Vacaville, CA grower imported it from Japan.

1870 During this decade the Red Delicious apple would be discovered in Iowa. The Golden Delicious apple appeared on a farm in West Virginia in 1910. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1873 The navel orange was brought from Brasil in 1870 by Saunders and given to the U.S.D.A. for use as grafting stock for the industry. (Ewan, 1969) Riverside resident Mrs. Luther Tibbets received two especially successful trees from which propagation material was taken. Her plants may be the source for all of today's navel orange trees. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1873 Sander built his first greenhouse at St. Albans, England. The Sander firm began a system of tracking orchid hybrid (grex) names that was later institutionalized by the Royal Horticultural Society.

1873 Legislation created Yellowstone, the first National Park. (Morgan in Punch, 1992)

1875 Daniel Peter and Henri Nestlé added condensed milk to chocolate to create milk chocolate. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1877 British traders sent seed of the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) from Brasil to Malaya, followed three decades later by development of Dutch plantations in Sumatra. By 1930 Brasil had lost the rubber market to plantations in Malaya and elsewhere; the work of 150,000 rubber trappers slowly dried up, returning the Amazonian city of Manaus to obscurity. In the 1920s the US company Firestone turned the American near-colony of Liberia into a land of rubber, gaining a concession of 1,000,000 acres from the Liberian government. In 1943 the US dollar became Liberia's currency. (Ponting, 1991) During WWII the US government, recognizing the importance of rubber harvest to the war effort, maintained a staff of plant pathologists in Liberia to help prevent importation of a leaf blight disease from South America.

1877 Frederick William Burbidge was sent to Borneo by James Veitch & Sons to collect orchids and other exotic plants. He met with Peter C. M. Veitch and they went to Kina Balu, Borneo's Sugar Loaf Mountain, returning to England in 1879. The account of this trip was recorded in The Gardens of the Sun.

1877 W. J. Beal, working at Michigan State University (then Michigan Agricultural College) made the first controlled crosses of corn in an effort to increase yield. Later workers would experiment with inbred varieties, devising a system of "double crossing" to produce large quantities of hybrid seed. In 1935 only one percent of US corn came from hybrid seed. Today virtually all corn grown in the US is hybrid, giving increased yields with reduced manpower. (Heiser, 1981) [See 1716, 1761]

1878 Charles Curtis was sent by James Veitch & Sons to Mauritius and Madagascar to collect plants. He sent back Angraecum sesquipedale. (Reinikka, 1972)

1878 Luther Burbank relocated from Massachusetts to Santa Rosa, CA to continue his plant breeding program. (Ewan, 1969)

1878 The Washburn experimental flour mill in Minneapolis marked the beginning of modern milling, based on a new Hungarian mechanical process.

1879 The chestnut tree in Cambridge, Massachusetts, under which Longfellow's village smithy stood, was felled to widen Brattle Street. A chair made from the wood was given to the poet on his 72nd birthday. Subsequent analysis of that chair indicated the tree was really a horse chestnut (a native to Europe,) not at all closely related to the American chestnut most readers would have imagined. (Rupp, 1990)

1880 Farmers began to cure tobacco using clean hot air rather than the smoky air of charcoal fires, thus producing a milder form of tobacco that greatly increased its usage. (Simpson, 1989)

1880 In this decade over 25% of sailors in the Japanese Navy developed beriberi - the nutritional disease resulting from insufficient quantities of the vitamin thiamine. An expanded diet corrected the disorder, but not until several years later did C. Eijkman, a Dutch physician working in the East Indies, demonstrate that a diet of brown rice - as opposed to white rice - prevented the disease. Beriberi had become more common because of the introduction of improved polishing techniques that removed the brown outer layers of the rice grain in which thiamine occurs. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1881 Chile defeated Bolivia in a war to take control of coastal and island areas where huge deposits of guano (bird droppings) could be harvested for sale to Europe for use in agricultural fertilizers.The war left Bolivia landlocked. (Ponting, 1991) Saltpeter (sodium nitrate) was extracted from guano and used in various industrial chemical processes, from creating fertilizers, to formulating sulfuric and nitric acids, to manufacturing gunpowder.

1881 H.F.C. Sander established his new 4-acre orchid nursery near St. Albans, England. By 1886 records show that 340 cases of Cattleya were received from South America in February and March alone. "Sander did more to popularize orchids than nearly any other grower of the time, bringing them within financial reach of persons of modest means. (Reinikka, 1972)

1881 The loganberry was introduced to commerce by James Logan from his garden in Santa Cruz County, CA. (Ewan, 1969)

1882 Bordeaux University professor Millardet noticed that the copper sulfate spray applied to grapes (to discourage children from eating the fruit from the orchards) deterred downy mildew. By adding lime, which caused the copper to precipitate and stick to the leaves, he invented Bordeaux mixture - one salvation of the French wine industry and an important early fungicide. (Langenheim & Thimann, 1982)

1883 Viscount Itsujin Fukuba built the first greenhouse (9 x 36 ft) in that Japan and imported a collection of tropical orchids from England and France. (Reinikka, 1972)

1883 Addis Ababa became the Ethiopian capital. Within twenty years, the surrounding zone, 100 miles in radius, was stripped of trees for charcoal production. (Ponting, 1991)

1884 An assistant to Sigmund Freud touched purified cocaine to his tongue and discovered a numbing sensation that led to its use as a local anesthetic. Later, a similar chemical compound was produced synthetically, procaine (commonly called by its trade name Novacaine), which has replaced cocaine medicinally. (Simpson, 1989)

1884 Kate Greenaway, author of children's books, published her Language of Flowers, one of the more popular dictionaries on this topic.

1885 Sponsored by the Royal Horticulture Society, the first Orchid Conference was held in England. (Reinikka, 1972)

1886 John S. Pemberton created Coca-Cola, a beverage using water (later carbonated water), caramel, kola nut, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, lime, and coca leaf extractions. By 1903 the makers began purging the coca leaf extract of its cocaine component before adding it to the syrup. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1886 The Dutch government began a study of beri-beri, which was devastating the native Indonesian population. Christian Eijkman was assigned the task of studying the "germ" thought responsible. When his laboratory chickens developed symptoms, Eijkman observed that a temporary diet of pure white rice coincided with the disease. Studies led to the culprit - the truncated cone rice mill - which so thoroughly polished the bran from rice as to remove some vital quality [See 1912], later determined by R. Williams to be thiamine, vitamin B₁. (Visser, 1986)

1887 The Hatch Act established the basis for the US Agricultural Extension service.

1889 Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach died (b. 3 January 1823) in Leipzig, Germany, leaving his orchid herbarium to the Vienna museum with instructions that it should remain closed for 25 years. Because the British had expected his collection to go to either Kew or the British Museum, this action, clearly designed to thwart upcoming British orchid taxonomists, caused an uproar.

1889 Amorphophallus titanum, a gigantic aroid from Sumatra, flowered for the first time in cultivation at Kew.

1889 The Pajaro Valley Evaporation Company of Watsonville, California, began small-scale production of dehydrated onions. In 1950 tins of their product, still usable, were discovered in Skagway, Alaska. (Rosengarten, 1969)

1890 A St. Louis physician formulated peanut butter as a food for invalids. In 1893 J. H. Kellogg (health food faddist famous for breakfast cereals) made peanut butter for patients with poor teeth. (Heiser, 1981)

1891 Ravenstein estimated Earth's carrying capacity at 5.994 billion people based on 73.2 million square kilometers in fertile lands (supporting 80 people per square kilometer), 36 million square kilometers of grasslands (supporting 3.9 people per square kilometer), and 10.9 million square kilometers in desert (supporting 0.4 people per square kilometer.) (Cohen, 1995)

1892 Charles Sprague Sargent traveled to Japan to open the Arnold Arboretum's first Asian mission.

1892 On 28 September, the first Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD opened to the public. Conceived as successor to the series of palaces that had been built in Sioux City, IA (beginning in 1887) the Mitchell building was made permanent in 1921 and is the only extant example of a "palace of the product of the soil." (Fussell, 1992)

1893 First presentation of the Glass Flowers to Harvard University (created under the guidance of Harvard Professor Ware by artists Leopold Blaschka and his son, Rudolph). (Ewan, 1969)

1893 Reid's Yellow Dent Corn gained the grand prize as "the world's most beautiful corn" at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Reid's corn became a major force in Midwestern agriculture and an important parent to modern hybrid corns. (Fussell, 1992)

1893 A Supreme Court decision, written by Justice Horace Gray, declared the tomato to be a vegetable, based on common usage of the word "vegetable" as opposed to the word "fruit." Thus tomato importer, John Nix, was required to pay a 10% vegetable tariff on a shipment of tomato fruit (now honorary vegetables) from the West Indies. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996; see quote from decision on page 88)

1895 Danish scientist Johannes Warming published his Oecoloty of Plants (Plantesamfund.) Basing his ecological system on water use and plant growth form, he essentially founded the modern methods of descriptive plant ecology. The terms xerophyte, mesophyte, hydrophyte, monocarpic, and polycarpic date from his usage. (Isely, 1994)

1896 Hirase and Ikeno published their discovery of motile sperm in Ginkgo and Cycas. (Bold, Alexopoulos, & Delevoryas, 1980)

1896 The New York Botanical Garden was established, following legislation drafted in 1891.

1897 The USDA section on Seed and Plant Introduction was formed, with David Fairchild as the "Explorer in Charge." (Camp, Boswell, & Magness, 1957)

1897 Having discovered major improprieties in bourbon production, the U. S. Congress passed the Bottled-in-Bond Act, controlling bourbon production at the source and setting standards for proof and aging. (Fussell, 1992)

1898 Wheat rust cost the US $67,000,000. By 1904 significant research programs were established to discover control measures. German scientist H. de Bary had earlier detailed the life cycle of wheat rust, but it was not until 1917 that sufficient study had been completed to support a barberry eradication program, which was first legalized in North Dakota. (Ewan, 1969)

1898 The Bayer Company introduced heroin as a substitute for morphine and codeine. By 1917 this drug was found to be greatly addictive and its use in over-the-counter cough syrups was discontinued. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1899 Minor Cooper Keith (the American builder of an 1871 Costa Rican railroad and subsequent planter of bananas) and the Boston Fruit Company merged to form the United Fruit Company. Today, half of all world banana exports come to the US. (Heiser, 1981)[see 1804]

1899 Founding of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Beatrice Farrand (wife of the first Director of the Huntington, Max Farrand) was a founding member. (Adams in Punch, 1992)

1900 The British owned Pacific Islands Company purchased rights to all minerals on 3-mile- long Ocean Island for £50 a year. Within 80 years 20,000,000 tons of phosphate for agricultural fertilizer (shipped to Australia and New Zealand for crops exported mainly to Britain) were extracted from the island, obliterating the original tropical vegetation and destroying the homeland of the original 2,000 islanders. The same fate befell neighboring Nauru (8.5 sq. miles.) and its original 1,400 inhabitants. (Ponting, 1991)

1901 Mendel's paper on inheritance in peas was republished in the RHS journal.

1901 A Japanese chemist invented instant coffee. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1901 Iowans Charles Hatt and Charles Parr built the first gasoline powered tractor. (Fussell, 1992)

1903 Wilson, collecting for Veitch, successfully reintroduced the blue poppy, Meconopsis, to Europe, though his greatest triumph was the successful introduction of the regal lily, Lilium regale.

1903 H. E. Huntington purchased San Marino Ranch, where he began to create his estate, complete with museum collections and botanical gardens.

1904 Iced tea was invented at the St. Louis World's Fair by an enterprising British salesman who discovered that fairgoers were not attracted to hot tea in summer weather. (Simpson, 1989)

1904 Chestnut blight from Japan was detected in the New York City area, with the first reported case at the Bronx Zoological Park. It is thought the fungal pathogen, Cryphonectria parasitica, arrived with importation of Asian chestnut trees in 1890. This disease quickly advanced to destroy nearly the entire native population of American Chestnut, until that time the largest of eastern trees and one of the most significant forest dominants in the Eastern mixed mesophytic association. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996) Rupp (1990) indicates that the pathogen arrived in 1895 amid a shipment of Chinese chestnut trees that would eventually be planted at the newly founded New York Botanical Garden. Rupp also calculated the loss in lumber alone at $400 billion.

1906 Pierre du Pont purchased the Pierce house and arboretum, property he would develop as Longwood Gardens. (Griswold & Weller, 1991)

1908 New York tea importer Thomas Sullivan introduced the tea bag as a means of marketing samples. (Pratt, 1982) By 1934, 8 million yards of gauze were used annually to be sewn as tea bags. (Simpson, 1989)

1908 Avocados were planted at San Marino Ranch (today, the Huntington Botanical Gardens), constituting what was apparently the first commercial avocado grove in California.

1909 Dr. Colville and Ms. White begin making crosses to produce the first 18 varieties of modern blueberries from native stock.

1910 A chemist with the Corn Products Refining Company (now Corn Products Company International) discovered a process that would allow the refining of corn oil for cooking, thus giving rise to the product Mazola. (Fussell, 1992)

1911 A two year famine began in Russia. While people starved and died, the country continued exporting a fifth of its annual grain production (which constituted about 25% of world trade). (Ponting, 1991)

1911 Kudzu was brought to the US from Japan for soil improvement, erosion control, and livestock forage. (Shetler in Viola & Margolis, 1991)

1912 Ballod calculated that a US standard of life would support 2.333 billion people on Earth, a German standard would allow 5.6 billion, and a Japanese standard could underwrite 22.4 billion people. (Cohen, 1995)

1912 The GooGoo Cluster, a chocolate, caramel, & peanut candy, was created in Nashville, TN. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1912 Tokyo gave cherry trees to be planted in Washington, DC. (Camp, Boswell, & Magness, 1957)

1912 Frederick Hopkins showed that there were chemical substances (additional to fats, carbohydrates, and minerals) obtained from food that are essential to human growth and maintenance. Casimir Funk termed these substances "vitamines." (Visser, 1986)

1916 Corn borer arrived in the US. Note that in Stephen Vincent Benet's The Devil and Daniel Webster Jabez Stone lost his corn crop to corn borers, even though Daniel Webster had died in 1852, 64 years before the arrival of corn borer. (Root, 1980)

1916 Youth Farm Clubs established during World War I concentrated on the tomato as a crop, helping to popularize this fruit. (Root, 1980)

1917 Knibbs calculated that if Earth's land area (exclusive of the Arctic and Antarctic) were 33 billion acres, and it could yield 752.4 trillion bushels of corn, then a population of 132 billion could be supported. (Cohen, 1995)

1917 Ford's Fordson tractor was introduced at $397. (Fussell, 1992)

1919 The 18th Amendment to the US Constitution initiated a period of alcohol prohibition. The nearly two decade period of prohibition caused great hardship for US vineyards and other growers and producers in the large beer, wine, and liquor industry.

1920 The American Orchid Society began, its first organizational meeting held on 25 March at Horticultural Hall, Boston, Massachusetts. (Reinikka, 1972)

1921 George Washington Carver appeared before the US Congressional Ways and Means Committee, promoting a protective tariff on peanuts. He demonstrated the many potential products/uses of peanuts and came away from the meeting with national fame. Due to his promotional efforts, the peanut is a major crop in the Southeastern coastal plain today - and peanut butter has become an American classic. (Isely, 1994)[see 1890]

1922 Knudson published his asymbiotic method of seed germination; "Nonsymbiotic Germination of Orchid Seeds" in Botanical Gazette. This technique revolutionized the propagation of orchids, both sexually and vegetatively. It led to techniques of mericloning and meristemming that are used widely for production of many horticultural crops today.

1924 International Harvester Company introduced their gasoline powered tractor, the Farmall, which was fitted with removable attachments. (Fussell, 1992)

1930 The Sanforizer Company introduced an ammonia-based process, devised by Sanford Cluett, that causes cotton fibers to swell, preventing shrinkage when washed. (OED)

1934 A major windstorm in the plains states removed 350 million tons of topsoil, scattering it over the eastern US and out into the Atlantic. It is estimated that 12 million tons fell on Chicago. The storms continued and by 1938 the top five inches of soil had been removed from 10,000,000 acres of land. In that year 850 million tons of soil were lost. By 1938 3.5 million people had abandoned farms on the great plains. One fifth of Oklahoma's population moved to other states. (Ponting, 1991)

1935 Analysis by botanist A. Koehler demonstrated that the homemade wooden ladder used during the abduction (resulting in murder) of the son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was made from the same wooden planks that floored Bruno Hauptmann's attic. Hauptmann was convicted of this crime. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1937 The Nobel Prize was awarded to Albert Szent-Gyögyi, the first person to isolate vitamin C. He extracted it from paprika. [See 1747](Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1938 Szent-Gyögyi withdrew his recent suggestion that "citrin" (now known to be various flavonoids), which was present along with vitamin C in citrus peels, could help maintain small blood vessels. These bioflavonoids were termed Vitamin P, and became the subject of much discussion. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proclaimed that bioflavonoids are neither vitamins nor of nutritional value (Visser, 1986)

1940 Steroids were discovered in the yam (dioscorea) that were useful for the manufacture of cortisone and sexual hormones. Consequently, the cost of hormones dropped from $80 to $2 per gram. [See 1956] (Heiser, 1981)

1943 About 3,000,000 people died from famine-based starvation in Bengal. (Ponting, 1991)

1944 Chinese botanists reported the discovery of the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides.) The tree hitherto had been known only from fossil material that was at least 20 million years old. (Rupp, 1990)

1947 Thor Heyerdahl sailed a raft made of balsa logs, the Kon Tiki, from South America far into the Pacific Ocean, to support his contention that prehistoric people could have made such journeys. Heyerdahl would use the presence in the Easter Islands of a plant called totara (Scirpus) that is native to coastal South America as proof of ancient travel. A closely related plant, also called totara, is used extensively by inhabitants of the area around Lake Titicaca - for thatching, for construction of mats, even for building boats. (Heiser, 1985)

1947 Developed during WW II, the herbicide 2,4-D was introduced for weed control. (Fussell, 1992)

1949 English phycologist (scientist who studies algae) Kathleen Drew-Baker described the complex life cycle of Porphyra (nori is in this genus). This understanding allowed commercial farming of nori in Japan to flourish. A statue of Drew-Baker stands in a Tokyo park overlooking the bay.

1954 Brown (combined in 1957 with Bonner and Weir) estimated that if humans were willing to sustain themselves through algae farms and yeast factories, 50 billion people could be supported on Earth. (Cohen, 1995)

1956 G. Pincus disclosed that a drug derived from the yam, dioscorea, could stop ovulation, therefore preventing conception - allowing production of a birth control "pill" to replace the previous need for an injection. (Heiser, 1981)

1957 Extracts from the common periwinkle were found effective in the treatment of childhood leukemia. (Simpson, 1989)

1958 The US established its main seed bank, the National Seed Storage Laboratory, in Ft. Collins, Colorado, where over 250,000 seed samples are maintained. This is one of the 19 seed-storage facilities in the US that constitute the National Plant Germplasm System. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1958 Clark estimated that with 77 million square kilometers of temperate zone agriculturally useful land, the Earth could support 28 billion people. (Cohen, 1995)

1961 Kleiber made a most interesting calculation. Assuming that 0.027 percent of Earth mass is carbon, and an average adult male embodies 12 kilograms of carbon, a limit of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 people could be exist. If, on the other hand, people lived on potatoes alone, and 48 billion hectares were planted to potatoes (that includes all 13.3 billion hectares of land not under ice and most of Earth's ocean areas,) a population of 800 billion could be supported. (Cohen, 1995)

1961 Melvin Calvin was awarded the Nobel Prize. In association with Andrew Benson, James Bassham, and other scientists, he described the light-independent reactions (often called the dark reactions, or the Calvin cycle) of the photosynthetic system. Beginning with carbon dioxide, these reactions actually synthesize organic compounds (3-carbon phosphate sugars) that become glucose and other sugars. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1962 Rachael Carson published Silent Spring, spurring on an entirely new era of environmental concern and awareness.

1964 The Surgeon General's Report connected smoking with lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and other diseases. [See 1761](Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1967 De Wit calculated the Earth's potential photosynthetic output. Using a human requirement of 1,000,000 kilocalories per year and allowing for city and recreation space, he calculated Earth's carrying capacity at 146 billion people. (Cohen, 1995)

1967 High-fructose corn syrup was introduced commercially by Clinton Corn Processing Co. (of Clinton, Iowa.) Manufactured using their patented enzyme Isomerose, the fructose sweetness of corn syrup was raised from 14% to 42%. With rising sugar prices, "Isosweet" became the sweetener for all major soft drinks. (Fussell, 1992)

1968 Head of the US Foreign Aid Program, W. Gaud, coined the term "Green Revolution." [See 1970] (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1970 Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. As the "Father of the Green Revolution" he developed high yielding dwarf strains of wheat while working at the Rockefeller-financed CIMMYT Agricultural Station in Mexico City. This improvement has allowed tropical countries to double their wheat productivity. Along with improvements in rice productivity at the center in the Philippines and other crops at yet more agricultural stations, the "Green Revolution" came into being. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1972 DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) usage was banned in the US. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1972 String trimmers were introduced. (Crotz in Punch, 1992)

1973 Lieth calculated the annual net primary production for land vegetation on Earth to be 100 billion tonnes of dry matter, having a caloric content of 426 thousand trillion kilocalories.

1975 The United Farm Workers won the concession to eliminate use of the short-handled hoe in lettuce cultivation. (Visser, 1986)

1977 The perfectly preserved corpse (from the 2nd century B.C.) of the wife of the Marquis of Tai was discovered in Ch'ang-sha, China. In addition to melon seed discovered in her intestines, the tomb contained a bowl of peaches. Belief since the Ch'in Dynasty held that peaches "eaten in time" would preserve the body from deterioration forever. This usage survives today in the tradition of shoutao - the long life peach - a steamed roll served on birthdays. (Root, 1980)

1978 Rafael Guzman, a student at the University of Guadalajara, discovered an extant stand of perennial corn (a kind of teosinte) in the mountains near Jalisco. (Fussell, 1992)

1981 Hundreds of people in Spain became sick and died from consuming cheap olive oil that had been adulterated with rapeseed oil imported from France. The rapeseed oil contained industrial aniline dyes and was manufactured only for use in steel mills. (Visser, 1986)

1982 The first genetically engineered crop was developed at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. By 1994 the first genetically engineered crop plant was approved for commercial marketing - the Flavr-Savr tomato - designed to slow fruit ripening and increase shop life. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1983 Barbara McClintock received the Nobel Prize for her work with the complex color patterns of Indian corn, studies that revealed moveable genetic elements termed "jumping genes."

1990 Project SEEDS was launched by NASA and The George W. Park Seed Co., allowing school students around the USA to compare growth of seed exposed to conditions of space with that of seed stored on earth. (Levetin & McMahon, 1996)

1994 An unusual stand of trees was discovered in Wollemi National Park within 200 kilometers of Sydney, Australia. The trees were found to represent an entirely new genus and species, Wollemia nobilis, in the Araucariaceae (the monkey-puzzle tree family).

1997 Hong Kong is returned to China under treaty conditions negotiated following the Opium Wars with Great Britain [See 1839]

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Visser, M. 1986. Much Depends on Dinner, Grove Press, NY, ISBN 0-802-19923-6, 351 pp.

Zohary, D & M. Hopf, 1994. Domestication of Plants in the Old World (2nd edition, 1st paperback), Clarendon, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-854896-6, 279 pp.

Pursuits Not So Trivial

The typical story of civilization will say little or nothing about plants. Historians, who focus on powers and potentates, on seminal events in the lives of individuals and nations, seldom acknowledge the roles of plants in the daily lives of humans, much less in great matters of economy and culture.

World history is different from a green perspective. It started with the formation of carbon, oxygen, and other elements in the hot fury of supernovae some 5+ billion years ago. Anaerobic bacterial life reigned for a billion years, until the revolution brought about by photosystem II - the unleashing of free oxygen. Advanced life forms, evolving in this newly oxygenated and reactive world, were aerobic. They were not only dependent totally on photosystem II for oxygen, but like many of their anaerobic comrads, dependent on photosystem I and the dark reactions for fixed carbon and available energy.

The entire breathing world, including human society, evolved so completely in the context of green services that everpresent plants have become as unseen as air itself. To most humans, historians included, plants are static natural fixtures, growing, but somehow un-living. The truth, from a botanical perspective, is predictably contrary. Plants are the green makers of life, utilizing the raw ingredients of a physical world, the legendary earth, wind, fire, and water, to create oxygen and sugars, cells and materials, landscapes and habitats.

This vegetable melieu underwrote the evolution of humans as hunter gathers and then created the basis for agrarian settlement, many would say the basis of civilization. Through these many changes in culture, human nature remains unaltered. We are all farmers and bandits, on one hand cultivating the living world to create value and life, while at the same time robbing the farm and Earth's natural resources for one-time gain. The examples and lessons that support this thesis are legion.

But such a simple idea is not the stuff of conventional history texts, and it is broader than conventional economic botany. Documenting the idea that plants have provided the foundations for human wealth, health, and pleasure has led to creation of this timeline, which chronicles the interaction between plants and humans. Entries range from basic to whimsical, providing an attempt to enliven the way we view plants.

The wealth and benefits afforded to humans by the vegetable kingdom have indeed provided the stage and resources for human activity, but it's not all the high drama of mutiny on the bounty. Civilization is the story of grains, wheat, rye, rice, corn, barley, and oats. It has turned on the value of spices and other other exotic plant products, goods that fired the engines of imperialism. Sugar cane and cotton demanded the toll of slavery. Tall white pines masted British ships and stoked a revolution. Tea and opium led to wars and addictions, a story that played out with the return of HongKong to China. Potato famine in Ireland changed the fabric of North American society.

Far from commanding the plant world, rulers have quietly fallen victim to chance and poor stewardship. Armies march on their stomachs, the fossil energy of coal and oil power the modern industrial world. Plants represent much more than our daily bread and a green pharmacy; the vegetable kingdom is indeed the basis for civilization.

The Plant Trivia Timeline represents a widespread search for information, for factoids, even trivia, that mark advances and turns in the relationship between plants and people. I encourage you to explore this chronology, use it for ideas, let me know if you see problems or inaccuracies, and send suggestions for new entries to planted@huntington.org.

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